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THE EISING TEMPER 
OF THE EAST 




THE RISING TEMPER 
OF THE EAST 

Sounding the Human Note in the World-Wide 
Cry for Land and Liberty 



BY 
FRAZIER HUNT 



The toad beneath the harrow knows 
Exactly where each tooth-pomt goes. 
The butterfly beside the road 
Preaches contentment to that toad. 
— Kipling. 



INDIANAPOLIS 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

, ^ / •■•? -> ■? -,.- 



Copyright 1922 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



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Printed in the United States of America 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 

APR -3 ^22 



0)C!.A659431 






To 
MY FATHER 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to 
Hearst's International Magazine, The Century 
and Good Housekeeping for permission to repub- 
lish certain portions of this book. 



PREFACE 

I HAVE called this book The Rising Temper of 
the East because in it I have attempted to show 
not only the awakening of a billion backward peo- 
ples of the Old World but to sound a note of 
warning to the white Christian East. I have tried 
to tell the human story of the rising winds of new 
freedom, the coming of new ideas, the birth of 
new hopes, the whole renaissance of the ancient 
East. 

The white man's domination of the billion men 
of the East hy force must cease. No longer 
can our culture and our civilization be carried to 
backward, ancient peoples on the vehicle of force. 
If there is a "white man's burden" it must in the 
future be borne on other shoulders than those that 
carry bayonets. 

Everywhere throughout the East there are 
danger signals flashing their warning to the con- 
quering West. The ruling, the domineering, the 
looting, must cease. If the West were wise it 
would shift its course now while there is still 
time. If it blindly stumbles on, ignoring these 
danger signals, the day will soon come when the 
work and the profits of four hundred years will 
be swept away. 

There are many men, wise to the East, who to- 



PREFACE 

day not only feel that this will happen but that 
once freed from the heel of the white West, and 
with the adoption of the science and culture of 
modem warfare, these billion men will seek 
race revenge, and that again black, brown and 
yellow hordes may swoop over white Europe and 
its great outposts of white culture. 

But they fail to take cognizance of a great new 
power that is abroad in the world — the power of 
the universal social unrest that is working within 
the borders of each country. Labor leaders in 
Calcutta are dreaming exactly the same hopes as 
labor leaders in Manchester ; social revolutionists 
in Tokyo are preaching the same doctrines as 
the revolutionists of Rome ; organizers of the cot- 
ton spinners of Shanghai are using the same argu- 
ments as organizers among the cotton workers of 
Fall River. 

The world unrest is world-wide unrest. No 
Great "Wall of China can exclude it : no desert is 
too wide for it to cross, or no ocean too deep. 
New winds of freedom are blowing over every 
country and into every corner of the globe. 

For the moment these winds in the East are 
winds of nationalism — self-determination — apoliti- 
cal freedom. They will bring an end to the physi- 
cal, political rule of the white West over the East. 
And then they mil change to winds of social 
unrest — and the energies and hopes of these bil- 
lion men will be turned from white hate to inter- 
nal struggles. There will be no time for con- 



PREFACE 

quest or revenge, no heart for wars of ag- 
gression. 

This is the story that I would tell in these 
following chapters — stories of common peoples 
and their leaders struggling up toward the light. 
I have no theories to prove — no pet ideas to ad- 
vance. I would set down between covers these 
pages of world news — facts of progress, garnered 
in years of travel and investigation. 

I saw a great new East being born before my 
very eyes. It was a new East of hope emerging 
from a tired, ancient, hopeless world. It was a 
restless, moving world that I saw. Books have 
been written about The Unchanging East, but 
that is not what I found ; it was a Changing East 
that greeted me everywhere. 

Its leaders interested me and its people fas- 
cinated me. Its revolt against the West and 
against its own traditions and time-worn customs 
thrilled me, just as the Eussian revolution first 
thrilled me in North Russia and then in Petrograd 
and Moscow and later in Siberia. Everywhere it 
has been the same story — ^millions awakening 
from the slumber of centuries. 

I have tried to chronicle things here just as I 
found them — ^to tell simply, directly and honestly 
the great pulsing, human story of Gandhi and 
India, of the Near East, China, Japan, Korea, 
Siberia, the Philippines — and, as well, the story 
of our own imperialistic ventures in Haiti and 
Mexico, I have tried to tell of Gandhi, the Man, 



PREFACE 

as well as Gandhi, the Leader ! I have attempted 
to paint Kagawa, the young liberal leader of 
Japan, just as vividly and humanly as he ap- 
peared to me that December day when I talked to 
him. I have tried to tell of common peoples and 
common hopes rather than of great international 
movements and world politics. 

If I have even partly succeeded in lifting the 
veil that is drawn over the hidden East and have 
shown that here are common peoples living and 
fighting and dreaming of better things, then I 
will be more than satisfied. 

New York, F, H. 

Feb. 1, 1922, 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



I Gandhi and His India IS 

II The New Religious Nationalism of the East . 42 

III Young China 66 

IV Kagawa of Kobe— the Story of the New Japan . 93 
V Struggling Korea ii5 

VI Ivan the Jap Killer 127 

VII White Australia 150 

VIII Our Own Little India 168 

IX Whose Country Is Haiti? 189 

X Our Restless Brothers below the Rio Grande . 204 

XI The Lamp Bearers 226 

XII The World's Under-dogs— a Conclusion . . . 241 



The Rising Temper of the East 

CHAPTER I 

GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

To TELL about Gandhi is to tell about India. 
Gandhi is India, and India, restless, determined 
and race conscious, is the real spirit of the awak- 
ening East. 

This that follows is the plain story of Gandhi 
— the hero and saint of India's struggling three 
hundred million, to-day little known to the out- 
side world but to-morrOw to be recognized as the 
insurgent figure leading the great coming revolt 
of the East against the white man's domination. 

To ninety-nine per cent, of the people of Ameri- 
ca and Europe the idea of a violent repudiation 
of white mastery by the black, brown and yellow 
men of the East is still a wild phantasy. But it 
is no longer a wild phantasy to me — ^for I have 
seen Gandhi and myself felt the rising temper 
of Asia. 

For hours I sat with this strange, shrunken 
little man whom three hundred million worship, 
and talked with him as freely as I would with an 
old friend. There was no fencing or parrying. 

15 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

He had nothing to conceal. He had hit upon a 
way of breaking the British power in India and 
cracking the greatest empire history has ever 
seen, and all without bombs or bloodshed. It was 
no secret and he wanted to tell me about it. 

This was down in Cawnpore. Early that morn- 
ing I had gone to the station to see him come in. 
The Indian city was still sleeping in the filth of 
its mud doorways. The heat of the night was 
dead and this was the cooling hour before a blaz- 
ing sun jumped like a jack-in-the-box high into 
the sky. 

We jogged through a semi-European street. 
In another part of the city— a clean part with 
wide streets and great la^vns — the white sahibs 
from England live. 

**You go Delhi?" my driver asked. 

"No. I'm going to see Gandhi arrive at the 
station. ' ' 

He turned in his seat. 

*' Saint Gandhi?" he questioned, as one pro- 
nouncing a sacred name. ''He is very wonderful. 
. . . He is poor like I am. His wife weaves 
his clothes for him. . . The English are afraid 
of him. They would like to put him in prison and 
kill him but they don't dare. He is very won- 
derful. ..." 

He had to pull his horse up sharp to keep from 
hitting a lazy, old sacred cow ambling across the 
road. Hitting a cow in India is no laughing mat- 

16 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

ter. It might be some one's grandmother or 
great-great-grandfather. It is the superstition 
of five thousand years' standing. 

We passed two men, wearing dirty patches of 
cotton around their loins, straining at a great 
cart. They were thin men with their ribs show- 
ing. 

"Do they know who Gandhi is?" I asked my 
driver. I was anxious to find out what different 
types of Indians thought of this leader. 

"Shall I ask them, sahihf" 

I nodded yes. 

He stopped them and spoke to the taller of the 
two, in a native dialect. The man was eager to 
talk. 

"He says Gandhi will give them freedom from 
the white men and ..." 

The smaller fellow who had kept silent so far 
stepped forward then and broke into the con- 
versation. 

"They have worked all their lives like beasts," 
he says, "and all they got is half enough food and 
a pig pen to sleep in. Gandhi will change every- 
thing for them." 

We drove on. An old man stretched on a rope- 
bed in front of a doorway in the street was dy- 
ing; my driver explained that old ones were al- 
ways brought outdoors to die. 

We turned into a narrow crooked street smell- 
ing of the rotted East. Early though it was, it 

17 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

was noisy with unwashed children, so filthy that 
one stopped idly to wonder whether the street got 
its dirt from the children or the children from 
the street. Most of them were naked: there was 
not even a rag to tie around them. They ran 
after me screaming for coppers. I told my driver 
to whip up his lazy horse. 

**Do they know about Gandhi?*' I asked him. 

"They get him now from their mother's 
breast," he answered. 

He was a talkative man, but it took all his at- 
tention now in order not to run over some naked 
baby playing in the dust, or brush into some 
woman, toothless and barren at forty — or crash 
into some blind beggar picking his way through 
the eternal night with his staff. 

In another five minutes we drew up at the sta- 
tion. Only a few local leaders were supposed to 
be there to welcome Gandhi, for the committee 
in charge of the great mass meeting to be held 
in the evening had given out word that there was 
to be no demonstration when Gandhi arrived. 
But that did not keep them away. They had come 
by the hundreds on foot and donkey-back and in 
western motor-cars. 

There must have been eight thousand there — • 
and I was the only white man among them. It 
gave me a creepy sensation of half fear. I felt 
like some thoughtless tourist peering into a 
strange temple during the hour of worship. For 

18 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

Gandhi was their priest and this was as holy to 
them as a sacrament. I imagine many of them 
thought I was a government agent or secret ser- 
vice man as I made my way through the great 
crush that filled the railway platform and over- 
ran into the little square in front of the station. 
I decided I would be less conspicuous and enjoy 
myself more in some modest niche so I elbowed 
to a place by the door of the station-master's 
office, on the outskirts of the crowd. 

The station agent, a pleasant Indian in Euro- 
pean uniform, came from his office and addressed 
me in English. I imagine he too thought I was 
an English official. 

**I'm an American writer." I explained imme- 
diately. "I've been hearing a lot about your man 
Gandhi so I've made a special trip here from Cal- 
cutta to see him." 

"You're an American!" he questioned. 

When I finally convinced him that I was, he 
was only too willing to answer my questions. 

"Gandhi is the man who is going to free India 
from the British," he whispered. "He has three 
hundred million Indians back of him. He's the 
only thing in the world the British are afraid of. 
They don't dare touch him. If they'd put him in 
jail or try to stop him there 'd be a revolution 
here within twenty-four hours. Just look at this 
crowd — there's every type of man in India here." 

It was a wonderful group of worshipers. 

19 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Here and there scattered through the crowd you 
could see a man in western dress, but the great 
majcrity wore very plain white cotton garments 
with gay colored headgear. They were mostly 
poor clerks or laborers. 

Gandhi was a dream and a hope for them. 
They were tired of it all — the ignorance, and 
poverty, and caste, crowned now with white su- 
premacy. They were blaming the white man for 
everything. It was unfair but very human. 

For one hundred and seventy years the British 
had been running things in India. Unquestion- 
ably they had accomplished much that was good 
for India — ^but they had only gone half-way. 
They had painted a veneer of western civilization 
on the soiled and outworn East when what was 
needed was a real renovation. The common man 
had not been touched. There 'd been no effort to 
educate him — ^that was too dangerous because 
with education comes new demands and fresh 
assumptions. 

So these laborers and petty clerks were ready 
for their chance in the world. They were gaining 
it, too, through their own fighting. Everywhere 
over India an epidemic of strikes had broken out. 
There was hardly a city of any importance that 
did not face serious labor troubles. These very 
nights Bombay was dark on account of a strike 
of the men of the gas works, while the postal and 
telegraph men had been striking for weeks and 

20 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

twelve hundred street-car men were out. In 
another part of India a great walk-ont of thou- 
sands of railroad men had taken place and word 
had just been received of a dangerous labor situa- 
tion on a number of tea plantations. 

I recalled the filth of Calcutta's streets. The 
sweepers were fighting for four cents more a 
day. Only recently a hundred thousand laborers 
employed in the great cotton mills of Bombay had 
struck for a thirty per cent, increase in wages and 
a ten-hour day. They were now earning about 
thirty cents a day. 

The birth of the labor movement in India has 
been even more spectacular than the political 
awakening. Two and a half years ago there was 
not an effective labor organization in the whole 
country. To-day there is a great central organi- 
zation known as the All Indian Trades Union Con- 
gress with several hundred thousand members 
enrolled in scores of trade unions. In the city of 
Madras alone there are twenty-seven distinct 
unions with a membership of more than eighty 
thousand — and the work is just started. 

The organizers of the national body plan to 
enroll more than two million workmen within 
a year. While it is all basically economic this 
powerful young organization is to be swung as a 
political club, in the battle for home rule. It is, 
with the Mohammedan organizations, the most 
powerful of the fighting bodies supporting 

21 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Gandhi and his non-cooperation. Its leaders 
plan to use all the methods of direct action, go- 
slow strikes and simple non-cooperation in order 
to gain their political ends. 

It is all tremendously picturesque. One leader 
outlined to me his plan for enrolling the cooks of 
Bombay. He explained there were fifteen thou- 
sand of them mostly employed in foreign homes, 
who already had a working organization. Any 
organized effort on their part to boycott British 
homes would simply demoralize the whole foreign 
life — ^for the servant is all-powerful and all-neces- 
sary in India. Modest households, which in 
America would have one maid at the most, must 
have from six to ten servants in India. 

Besides growing race conscious, these millions 
were becoming class conscious as well. To-day 
they were blaming the white man for their condi- 
tion. But to-morrow they will find that their 
newly born unions are not being checked by Brit- 
ish power alone. Some day they will discover 
that Calcutta's jute mills and Bombay's cotton 
factories and the steaming tea plantations and 
the scorching fields are not all owned by English- 
men. 

They will discover that the caste system that 
chains them to the mud-holes they were born in 
was thought out and working long before — thou- 
sands of years before — ^the British Empire was 
ever dreamed of. Some day the fifty-seven mil- 

22 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

lion '^untoucliables" — ^the pitiful human animals 
of the lowest depths and the bottom caste, living 
worse than swine — will Hft up their heads and 
tear to pieces the system that has cheated them 
for so long. To-day in some parts of India, if 
they walk within sixty-four feet of a Brahmin of 
the sacred highest caste, or throw their shadow 
on him, they might be beaten to death. To-mor- 
row they will wield the clubs themselves. 

Our own Christian foreign missions, often 
sneered at and made fun of by the unknowing, 
are reaching down and touching these poor "un- 
touchables. ' ' They are bringing them out of their 
wallow holes. Most of the Christian converts in 
India are from this God-forgotten class. And 
strange to tell, the simple single baptism of these 
abused people makes them step forward real men, 
who shake off all the fear and superstition of 
their beaten caste as they shake the water from 
their dripping heads. 

And this same thing is coming true of the num- 
berless other castes of the lower orders. They 
blame the British to-day for their poverty and 
ignorance. But when they do break the British 
power they will discover they have other things 
to break before they can come up into the sun- 
light. And one by one they will smash their 
castes and superstitions and traditions and their 
man-made religions. 

The revolt of the East against the West is only 

23 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

a prelude to the greater revolt of the East against 
the East itself. But foreign masters come first, 
and so here these thousands were on this seething 
platform offering themselves to Gandhi — their 
saint and hero-leader. 

Standing near me was a beggar in a bit of 
grimy sack cloth: in the bazaars and the great 
whispering galleries of the East he had caught 
the magic of Saint Gandhi. He had quit his stand 
and hidden his beggar's bowl for the moment, to 
shout the name of Gandhi. 

The train was late but the crowd was patient; 
for thousands of years they had been waiting and 
so an hour or two more didn't make any differ- 
ence. Several women were in the crowd and I 
noticed a number of boys; but they lacked the 
irresponsibility and spontaneity of our own boys ; 
they were born old. 

Then the train came in, and from a third-class 
wooden coach a little figure in white — a pathetic 
little figure — alighted. With a sense of shock I 
realized that this insignificant shrunken figure 
was the man I had heard so much about — the 
great Gandhi. He was thin, shrunken, almost 
emaciated, and there was no look of the leader 
about him. 

But I knew it was Gandhi as quickly as the 
crowd did. He was pathetic but there was a touch 
of tremendous spiritual power about him. 

Here was the man who was shaking the world 

24 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

with a new idea. Here was the man who was 
fighting a new kind of warfare — who was enlist- 
ing the souls and hearts of men to break ma- 
chine-guns. 

This was the man who twenty-five years ago, 
a young English trained lawyer of good family 
and high caste, had given up everything to fight 
for his countrymen. 

Eeturning to India from his law school in Eng- 
land he had been sent by his firm to South Africa 
to conduct an important case. With the case set- 
tled he was preparing to go back to India when 
his sympathies were enlisted in a fight that was 
being made to improve the condition of thousands 
of contract Indian laborers employed in South 
Africa by the Boers and English. 

It was a fight that extended through twenty- 
five years and this thin, anemic weakling led it. 
He spent not a little of that time in prison and in 
disgrace but he stuck to his guns and in the end 
saw the worst of the injustices swept away and 
his countrymen in much better condition. 

Time and again he had been roughly handled, 
but he had never lost faith in the right and justice 
of the British Empire. When the Boer War came 
along he promptly organized an ambulance corps 
for the English Army and actively engaged in 
helping the British cause. 

When this last great war broke out, Gandhi 
had only just arrived in England from South 

25 



THE RlSIXa TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Africa, but he promptly organized another ambu- 
lance corps. In 1915 he went to India and for 
three years was active in his support of the Brit- 
ish cause. 

At the same time he was quite willing to throw 
himself into dangerous labor situations when he 
made certain that his people were being mis- 
treated by the government or their employers or 
their landlords. He made no discrimination here 
between the English and his own people. Slowly 
he gained the great confidence of all India. His 
life of sacrifice and unselfish devotion had won 
him the title of *' Saint'* Gandhi. Like most of 
India's beloved heroes of the past, he was a hero 
of the soul and not of the sword. 

Through it all he kept his faith in the British 
Empire. Others faltered and lost faith, but he 
kept his bright. He insisted that India must help 
England in her hour of need and then when the 
war was won England would do the square thing. 
He would not countenance anything that even 
hinted at revolt. 

Then one steaming April day at Amritsar in 
the north of India, when a British general pumped 
steel into a vast crowd of unarmed Indians, killing 
four hundred and injuring another one thousand 
— and England didn't seem to care — ^he lost this 
faith. Not many people in the western world re- 
member anything about the incident, but there 
are few dates in India's thousands of years of 

26 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

history that are more important — and few days 
in the annals of the British Empire that are 
blacker or promise to be more costly. 

It turned Gandhi from a strong believer in the 
Empire to a great hater. And when Gandhi 
turned India turned. All India turned — Moslems, 
Hindus, Sikhs — all India. 

For centuries India has quarreled and fought 
within herself. Different sects, castes and reli- 
gions have kept the great country in a turmoil. 
England had only to fan the fire of these differ- 
ences to make her rule a comparatively easy one. 
It has been her famous "divide and rule" policy. 

The Indian army is a good illustration of this 
policy. Each brigade will be composed of entirely 
different and distinct units — one Mohammedan 
battalion, one Hindu battalion, one Sikh battalion 
with one British white battalion to control the 
whole thing. Each has different customs, dia- 
lects, religions and superstitions. There has been 
no chance of developing any unity of opposition 
among all these widely separated groups. 

Now it is different. The Mohammedans and 
the Hindus have buried their ancient grudges and 
the leaders of the seventy million Moslems and 
the two hundred million Hindus are at last work- 
ing hand in glove. In 1906 a Moslem League was 
formed and in 1915 held its first joint session 
with the great All Indian National Congress — an 
unofficial body representing the hopes and de- 

27 



THE ElSma TEMPEE OF TKE EAST 

mands of all India. Tighter and tighter the bonds 
binding the two great bodies have been drawn 
so that to-day they are fighting side by side. 

These seventy million Mohammedans, incident- 
ally, are the real fighting force of the home rnle 
agitation. As a leaven and ferment their unrest 
has been pnt upon a religions basis, with a fonn- 
dation that goes down to the very depths of the 
Moslem faith. 

These Moslems, besides fighting for home mle, 
demand that England rewrite the TnrMsh peace 
treaty and give back to the snltan of Turkey the 
control over all the sacred Mohammedan shrines- 
To the simple believer it is a pure matter of reli- 
gion, but to the shrewd Moslem leaders, this 
religious element is the steel in their swords of 
revolt. 

The terrible killing that April day in Amritsar 
helped forge these same swords. And quite as 
important, it broke the faith of Gandhi in the just- 
ness and fairness of England. And when 
Gandhi's faith went, India too lost her faith. 

With faith in England gone Gandhi showed 
them how to draw a great new faith in their own 
India. They could break this power that was 
overshadowing them by the invincible forc^ of 
their spirits. They would withdraw from every- 
thing that was British. They would cease all 
cooperation: they would boycott British goods; 
they would pull the fires from the British engine 
in India. They would leave England in India 

28 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

prostrate and helpless. They would beat the 
British Empire by simply not playing baU. They 
TTould break the British Empire by taking away 
India. 

This thin, half broken figure worming his way 
gently through the crowd was the torch-bearer of 
aU tlis. 

It was raw drama. It was all new for the West 
— ^this power of spiritual force. This man was 
pleading and begging for peace, for non-violence, 
and yet he was enlisting the millions of sleeping 
India for war. It was a paradox that only the 
East could understand. It was his weak thin 
voice that was calling millions of native Indians 
out of the past. 

He had finally awakened them and here they 
were, thousands of them, cheering from the very 
depths of their hearts. 

Men fought to kiss his hands and to touch his 
skirt with their lips. One patriarch with a great 
white beard clutched his hands and buried his 
face in them and sobbed in them. He was a Mes- 
siah to them all. 

Two hours later Gandhi was sitting at my feet 
talking to me in soft low voice. It was in a great 
bare room without furniture. There was no one 
there when I entered, but presently a door opened 
and Gandhi stepped forward with hand out- 
stretched. 

He had eyes that were deep with pity and love, 

29 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

and burning bright with a great purpose. You 
forgot that he was a frail little man with a funny 
shaved head and hollow sallow cheeks, with most 
of his teeth gone, and that he wore coarse home- 
spun clothes, and that his feet were bare. It was 
his eyes that held you. 

Some one brought a single chair and he insisted 
that I sit on it while he squatted cross-legged on 
the floor beside me. Possibly twenty of his local 
disciples came in noiselessly and seated them- 
selves on the floor in a semicircle about us. Cer- 
tainly not half of them could understand English, 
but they could look at Gandhi. 

"What can I tell you?" he asked in soft, per- 
fectly spoken English, 

"The story of how you are going to break Brit- 
ish power in India," I replied. 

A ghost of a smile that seemed to hurt him 
trailed across his face like a moving shadow. 
"During the Boer War I had great faith and con- 
fidence in the British and raised a stretcher- 
bearer corps to help them," he began. "In 1914 
I reached London two days after" war was de- 
clared and immediately organized an ambulance 
corps. Later I came on here and when I found 
the Mohammedan leaders worried about the fu- 
ture of the sultan, who is the head of the Church 
and the guardian of their shrines, I told them that 
Lloyd George would keep his promise, that he 
would treat Turkey fairly. But they said no. 

30 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

**I was insistent that we must do all we could 
to help England in this great hour of her need. 
I pleaded for army enlistment — ^we raised more 
than a million men in India for the British Army, 

"Then the war ended and I said that now we 
would gain our reward, we would he given at least 
practical home rule and be permitted to work out 
our own destiny. I still had faith ! ' ' 

Always it was this great faith that he came back 
to, time and again. Faith, he believed, would 
move empires. 

"But there was nothing but promises and a 
half-hearted reform bill. They call this bill the 
Montague-Chelmsford Bill and they hold that it 
fulfills their pledges. But it gives us only the 
cheapest imitation of self-government, of home 
rule. It allows ieertain Indian assemblies and 
local administrations, but it is all circumscribed 
by a system of checks and balances that leaves all 
the real power in the hands of the British. It is 
a great subterfuge — and we are sick and tired of 
subterfuges. 

"While this bill was being discussed and pre- 
pared the Punjab disturbances broke out. Those 
were terrible days, but I was sure that the British 
would be just and fair so I still held faith." 

At great length Gandhi explained all about 
these terrible days. Over all the cities of North- 
em India there was in that spring of 1919 a grow- 
ing feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction. About 

31 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

half the population are Moslems, and already 
there was at work the religious ferment that was 
expressing itself in the KJialifat questions. But 
more important than this religious aspect was a 
pure demand for nationalism. This demand and 
the unrest that went with it were intensified by 
the Rowlatt Bill which gave special and drastic 
power for the handling of all kinds and phases 
of rebellious actions. 

This Rowlatt Bill was a pure war-time measure 
kept in force after the war. It gave the govern- 
ment tremendous powers over the press and gave 
to police and judiciary practically autocratic 
authority over everything that seemed so much as 
flavored with any demand for home rule and free- 
dom. 

As a protest against this law, hartals — com- 
plete closing of all stores and shops — ^began to be 
called by the natives toward the last of Febru- 
ary, 1919. Meetings were held everywhere and a 
tenseness against the British began to be felt. 
Gandhi, who attempted to visit the Punjab, was 
turned back to the border, intensifying the feel- 
ing. Inflammatory speeches and seditious notices 
were of almost daily occurrence. 

On the morning of April 10, 1919, Doctor Satya- 
pal and Doctor Kitchlew, the two most powerful 
local leaders in the north, were deported by motor 
from Amritsar. As soon as this news spread a 
crowd collected in Amritsar and attempted to 

32 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

marcli to the deputy commissioner's to protest. 
At HaU Gate Bridge it encountered a patrol of 
soldiers; stones were thrown and the troops re- 
plied with fire, killing several. At this the crowd 
became a wild mob, completely out of the hands 
of its leaders. It burned all European and gov- 
ernment property in the city and kiUed three Eng- 
lish bank managers, and Miss Sherwood, a mis- 
sion worker, was assaulted, the railway station 
was attacked and an English guard killed. 

"On the morning of April 13th, General Dyer 
heard that a great meeting was to be held in a 
hollow square called Jallenwala Bagh," Gandhi 
went on. "A few minutes before five in the eve- 
ning he marched a detachment of fifty Gurkhas 
and Sikhs into one end of the square and imme- 
diately opened fire on the unarmed crowd, some 
ten thousand people, assembled there." 

Gandhi's voice trailed into a whisper of horror. 
I was living again the brutal memories of my own 
visit to this slaughter pen. 

Gandhi called it ''Jallenwala Bagh" — its In- 
dian name. In my mind I had always called it 
Death's Hollow. I had been there only a few 
days before, and again I was walking along the 
lane leading into it-r-a lane so narrow that Dyer's 
two armored cars could not pass through. 

Over the whole terrible hollow hung a death 
shadow as sickly and crushing as the pitiless heat 
that smothered everything like a great blanket. 

33 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

There should have been buzzing blue flies and a 
vulture or two about, but there was none — the 
heat was too terrific even for flies and carrion. 

"Through that lane Dyer and his fifty Gurkhas 
and Sikhs came in," Gandhi droned. "They left 
their armored cars outside because they could not 
bring them in; they would have killed every one 
had they had those machine-guns. 

"On a little rise of ground next the wall Dyer 
drew up his soldiers. He marched them in, 
placed them on both sides the entrance and imme- 
diately they opened fire. The people had no 
warning, no chance. 

"The speaker's stand was in the center. There 
were four or five small passages, altogether, and 
after the soldiers started firing and the crowd 
tried to escape he concentrated his firing on these 
exits. There were heaps of dead and injured 
around each of them. He fired until he 'd used up 
all his ammunition — one thousand six hundred 
and fifty rounds — ^he admitted that in his evi- 
dence. If he'd had his armored cars inside he 
would have killed them all." 

Like one wandering in a trance I stumbled 
again over the parched brown ground of the 
square, raising my feet so that I would not tram- 
ple the prostrate ghosts of dead men. Here were 
bullet marks in the wall; some untrained boy 
sepoy still with a heart, was shooting high. Over 
there was the low mud wall that had proved 

34 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

death's hurdle to scores; a fresh coat of dried 
mud hid its scars. On this side was an unpro- 
tected open well, some twenty feet wide, that had 
been the tomb of a half dozen men. 

Again I sat in the shade of the single big tree — 
men and boys had fought that day for a place 
behind its sturdy trunk. Four hundred men had 
been killed and at least a thousand injured in this 
hollow during those six minutes of firing. 

I brought myself up with a jerk. I was back in 
Cawnpore in this great bare room. Gandhi was 
squatting on the floor beside me, playing with his 
bare toes, and in the half-circle were his followers. 
He was still talking in his soft, gentle voice. 

"But infinitely worse was the horrible, devilish 
crime of deliberately breaking the spirit of the 
people — ^people who had given tremendous help 
to the empire during the war. 

' ' Still I held to my faith and in December, 1919, 
I pleaded with our unofficial Indian National 
Congress for cooperation, assuring them that 
when the British people knew the facts they 
would sweep away Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwy- 
er, General Dyer and the whole breed, and right 
the Khalifat wrongs. But I saw Lloyd George 
turn against us and British public opinion praise 
to the skies Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwyer, who 
was a hundred times worse than General Dyer. 
I think General Dyer would have acted like a fine 
soldier had not the spirit of O'Dwyer poisoned 

35 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

him. But Greneral Dyer went mad, shooting inno- 
cent men until his ammunition was exhausted." 

Gandhi's face was flushed as he continued: "I 
can't accuse the Germans of anything half as 
terrible as what Dyer did. When I saw the House 
of Lords and many members of the House of Com- 
mons further insult India by defending Dyer, I 
thought my connection with British power must 
end until they repented for their crimes and 
asked forgiveness. They've done neither, so I 
am trying my best to end British connection 
with India. 

** At first I thought the new legislative reforms 
might work, but to-day with the scales dropped 
from my eyes I look upon them as a death-trap. 
So now I am advocating non-violent non-coopera- 
tion. India has a population of three hundred 
and fifteen million, while the number of English 
officials here are not more than one hundred thou- 
sand. If we break all connection with this one 
hundred thousand, in spite of machine-guns, aero- 
planes and strong forts, they are physically pow- 
erless; therefore if we non-cooperate they must 
automatically leave India or satisfy us. And 
they can satisfy us now only by rewriting the 
Turkish peace terms, granting full reparation for 
Punjab crimes and by giving full self-govern- 
ment, such that India may voluntarily remain a 
party in the empire — if she chooses* It is to be 
non- violent non-cooperation." 

36 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

This Tolstoian philosophy of non-resistance is 
as old to the Bast as the hills of the Himalayas, 
but it will always be mysterious and untranslat- 
able to the pure western mind. It is a faith in 
the unbreakable force of spirit. It is the convert- 
ing of a negative force into a positive one; the 
vitalizing of the inertia of the East. It is all of 
the mysticism of the Orient. 

Yet it is quite simple and quite plausible. It 
is nothing more nor less than the strike of all 
India. The problem Gandhi faces is to establish 
a propaganda organization sufficient to make 
India conscious of her power and willing to suffer 
in order to gain her ends. 

The general scheme of non-cooperation adopted 
by the Indian National Congress, the great voice 
of India, embodies a number of points : 

1. Giving up of all British titles and honorary 
offices. 

2. Boycott of all official functions. 

3. Withdrawal of students from all govern- 
ment owned or aided schools and the establish- 
ment of Indian national schools. 

4. Boycott British courts by Indian lawyers 
and litigants and the establishment of private 
arbitration courts. 

5. Refusal of Indians to be candidates for new 
assemblies and the total abstinence from all vot- 
ing, and 

6. Boycott English-made goods, 

37 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Already the program is being extended to in- 
clude non-payment of taxes. "VVitlidrawal of all 
government servants will probably be attempted 
later, with desertion from the army as a final 
stage. It is all Gandhi's idea and it is Gandhi's 
power that keeps the whole movement from turn- 
ing to terrible violence. 

"If there is violence it mil be because the gov- 
ernment takes oppressive measures against us," 
Gandhi continued. *' There is always danger in a 
movement of this kind, but if we had not taken 
this course there would have been trouble any- 
how. We shall go ahead with what we have 
mapped out, but if our present non-cooperation 
fails, we shall next call out all government ser- 
vants; and the next phase will be to call out the 
soldiers. The amount of violence will depend on 
what the government does rather than what we 
do. 

"One thing is certain — ^India is not going to 
stop. We are trying to win now by non-violence ; 
if this fails the consequence will be too terrible to 
contemplate. Our people then will have lost all 
faith in peaceful means. 

"The movement might get out of my hands and 
beyond my power but even with that in view and 
even facing anarchy, it will be better than the 
present emasculated, half -beaten condition of 
India. The English have deprived us of all man- 
liness, all self-respect, all self-reliance. They 

38 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

have impoverished us in body, mind and soul. 
They have broken our hearts." 

Outside there was shouting. Gandhi's follow- 
ers were tired of waiting; they wanted a fresh 
glimpse of their hero. 

I rose and bowed myself out of the room. As 
I made my way to my carriage the crowd won- 
dered what a white man had been doing in this 
house of their saint. Some of them muttered 
sullenly as I went by. 

It was India muttering. It was the whole 
East muttering. 

And some day it will turn into a wild shouting 
— a cry that will carry with it hope and fear and 
anger and sorrow. The splendid, lovable young 
Prince of "Wales heard it on his visit to this pass- 
ing half empire of his. In two or three places it 
became an audible, sullen warning cry: in others 
it was but the low moaning of heart-broken 
people. 

Surely the prince learned a great deal on this 
inspection tour — just as Gandhi learned a great 
deal. They both must have felt keenly and fear- 
somely the rising temper of great India. 

Gandhi, I know, saw that his immediate task 
was to keep his non-violent movement just that — 
to keep angry men sane. He had seen a strong 
wind of hate and determination throw the sparks 
of his gentle flame of non-cooperation high in the 
air. He had seen that common India is hardly 

39 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

prepared for mass discipline and non-violent 
mass revolt. 

This knowledge will probably slow up bis re- 
volt. In these early days of 1922 as I write he is 
centering his work on the idea of a nation-wide, 
effective, pacific boycott of foreign, and particu- 
larly British-made, goods. To the millions this 
means cotton goods. 

In his fight to awaken British consciousness 
through the pocketbooks of Manchester cotton 
manufacturers, he has led the movement for a 
return to the old hand looms. To-day in India 
the real badge of patriotism and nationalism is 
the wearing of the course, home-made cotton gar- 
ments. Clothes of foreign cut or foreign goods 
are a mark of disloyalty. 

And so India stumbles on. Her best friends 
know that the days ahead will not be gentle ones 
for her. They know that should she succeed in 
breaking the British hold on India that dark days 
would follow. 

But they also know that England can not give 
much to India — that India must dream and hope 
and fight to gain things that will be of real bene- 
fit to her. They know that the very wishing and 
struggling — the very doing and daring — ^the very 
act of arousing a consciousness for independence 
and a willingness to fight and die to gain it, goes 
a long way in making common India ready and 
worthy of that independence. 

40 



GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 

India did need England — ^but now for her own 
national soul she needs the battle that it will take 
to send England from her shores. She will gain 
from the very fight more than England could 
ever give. 

In the end a new India will be bom — an India 
that is of the East yet has the iron of the West 
in her civilization. As she takes from the West 
our genius for organization, our inventions, our 
science and some of our ethics, she will give back 
much of her priceless philosophies, her medita- 
tion, her arts. 

It will be a fair exchange. A better, finer East 
will result — and a wiser, more tolerant West. 



CHAPTER II 

THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM OF THE EAST 

The stoey of the revolt against white domina- 
tion by India 's three hundred million is the story 
of the imrest of but one-third of the billion black, 
brown and yellow men of the awakening East. 
This that follows is the story of another discon- 
tented third — of the great Mohammedan millions 
scattered from the provinces of India, through 
the historical passes of the Himalayas, across 
Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, over the Nile and 
into Egypt, and across the great stretches of 
Northern Africa. 

They too are tired of domination. They too 
are tired of their subservience to Europe. They, 
like the millions of ignorant, half -hungry Hindus 
of India, want to run their own affairs their own 
way, and they do not care if it is less efficient or 
less modern or less "civilized" than the way of 
their European masters and tutors. They are 
willing to admit the superiority of much of west- 
em civilization, but they want to be the choosers 
themselves. 

It is difficult for the outsider to realize the 
depth and the vital consequences of this growing 

42 



THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

racial and national consciousness of the sub- 
merged peoples of the East. It is easy to wax 
sentimental over the denied rights of small na- 
tions and grow maudlin over such honeyed 
phrases as self-determination, but demand for 
self-government of the East is far from a senti- 
mental thing — it is deep and lasting and its roots 
are planted in hate. 

I remember it was in a tiny nameless village 
not so very far from Cairo that I first touched 
hands with this growing hate of the common 
Egyptian for the British. British officials had 
told me that all this talk of revolt and nationalism 
was the work of a few rattle-brained, loose- 
tongued Egyptian lawyers and boy-students, and 
that it had no real roots. So I took a camel trip 
into the mud villages along the Nile to discover 
first-hand whether it was only an exotic plant 
thriving on hot air or if it did really go deep into 
the ground. 

Our lazy old camels shambled their way noise- 
lessly through the narrow crooked lanes of the 
village. Everything was baked mud and straw 
and brown dirt. A half-dozen times we turned 
corners and all but bumped into veilless women 
carrying water-jugs on their heads. Each time 
they fled in panic. Within their own little com- 
munities they lived freely and sanely, but the in- 
stant they encountered a stranger and particu- 
larly a white man they ducked their heads behind 
raised elbows like bashful children. 

43 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

We drew up in front of the largest house in the 
village and our camels folded themselves up joint 
by joint and we slid off. A queer-looking individ- 
ual, with cross eyes and a torn old khaki overcoat 
that had seen war service, welcomed us to his city. 
Apparently he was the village constable. He led 
us to the corridor of the house and excusing him- 
self for a moment, shuffled inside and in a half 
minute brought out a kindly-looking patriarch 
with a great white beard and very gentle, friendly 
eyes. 

The old fellow apologized profusely for not 
knowing in advance of our intention to visit him, 
and hospitably showed us the way into a large 
square living-room with a divan at one end. Then 
he gave an order to the constable and the cross- 
eyed man retired. Apparently he sent him after 
the rest of the village elders, for in a few minutes 
they began to file into the room with their best 
robes on. There must have been ten or a dozen 
of them all told. 

These were wonderful old men. The village 
probably had a hmidred mud houses and these 
dozen men were the wisest and most trusted men 
of the community. Only one or two of them could 
read or write, but they were as shrewd as Yan- 
kee farmers. In their flowing colored robes and 
brilliant headgear they looked as if they might 
have stepped from some child's picture-book of 
biblical tales. 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

They welcomed me with greatest courtesy, but 
they were suspicious. I said something about 
Egyptian politics, but they were evasive. ''We 
have no interest in politics here in the country," 
one old man on my left answered. "We care only 
about how much it costs to live and how low the 
price of our cotton is." 

For fifteen minutes they talked of cotton and 
explained how the whole life of Egypt was bound 
up in it. When the price was high Egypt smiled 
and was happy but when a slump came there was 
no joy along the Nile. 

"We are actually growing cotton at a loss at 
the present price," one explained for the tenth 
time. "Something must be done or we fellaheen 
wm ..." 

"Just why is it that you want the British to 
go?" I cut in suddenly, turning to a squat old 
fellow sitting near me who had remained silent 
all during the cotton talk. 

"We want Egypt for ourselves," he replied, 
thrown for the moment off his guard. "I slave 
and save and send my boy to school and then to 
college. When he finishes he finds all the good 
government jobs open only to the English, He 
must take a small place or come back to this little 
village and help me in the fields and irrigation 
ditches. We want our own people to run our oa^ti 
country. We are tired of outsiders; we are sick 
of doing only what they want us to do. . „ ,. " 

45 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

''And you," I shot at another, ''what have you 
against the British?" 

"During the war they took our camels and our 
donkeys and our grain and drafted our sons in 
their labor armies and oppressed us just as they 
mshed," he answered rapidly. I had broken the 
crust at last and they all wanted to talk. "The 
British showed us just what they were in the war. 
We trusted them before that but never again will 
we . . . " 

A tall, raw-boned, bearded man in a rich blue 
robe — a commanding figure in any gathering — 
rose from his chair at this point and strode up in 
front of me. He was excited and aroused, and if 
ever a man told what was beating in his heart 
it was he. 

"Yes, but that isn't all," he exclaimed. "Look 
at the cursed Capitulations — chains tied to the 
hands and feet of poor Egypt. You all profit 
from them. What chance have we for justice in 
a case against a foreigner?" 

I was silent although I could have answered 
with the stock foreign apologies for these Capitu- 
lations. They were an inheritance from the days 
of Turkish rule and had been brought from Con- 
stantinople by the Sick Man of Europe. They 
were similar to the "extra territorial rights" 
practised in China. Here in Egypt they exempted 
foreigners from practically all taxation and all 
control by Egyptian authority. If a foreigner 

46 



THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

conunitted a crime he could be tried only by his 
own consular court. If there was a civil dispute 
between foreigners or a foreigner and a native 
it was tried in the "mixed courts" with foreign 
and native judges. These Capitulations were un- 
questionably unjust in many ways. 

"Even these terrible Capitulations are only 
part of it," he went on. "So much do the Eng- 
lish want our cotton that they won't let us plant 
tobacco, and they discourage the growth of our 
own industries and retard our commercial devel- 
opment. We are tired of the English and we 
want them all to leave. If they remain they must 
act as our guests and not as our masters. We 
want istiJclad — independence. ' ' 

"But independence comes high," I suggested. 
"Are you sure you are ready to pay the full 
cost?" 

"With our own lives and with the lives of our 
sons . . . " 

"And with the lives of our wives and of our 
children," a man across the room interjected. 

It was dramatic but these men were speaking 
from their hearts. In frozen Siberia I had heard 
peasants, dreaming of driving the Japanese from 
their lands, speak with the same fervor and spirit. 
This Egyptian word istiJclad was as magic a 
word as the Eussian svohoda or the Korean 
mansai — ^independence! liberty! freedom! 

Here in this Nile village I was seeing the birth 

47 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

of the spirit of nationalism, of something new for 
this part of the world. For the first time in the 
history of all Egypt the fellah was thinking of 
other things besides family or village loyalty — or 
a stomach full of rice. He had a national idea 
and ideal for the first time. He wanted common 
education and common chance. He wanted real 
equality. He wanted class equality and color 
equality and political equality. He was awaken- 
ing. 

**But you men forget what the conditions were 
in the old days before the British came," I 
argued. **I venture that some of you in this room 
still bear the scars of the tax collector's whip or 
the overseer's lash." 

"Yes," one old fellow answered, "but no one 
is ever going to oppress us in the future. We are 
sick and tired of being under-dogs." 

For the forty years the British had been in 
Egypt they had neglected lower education and 
spent Egyptian money only for higher schools to 
train their clerks and educate an overdose of 
lawyers. But there had been no great outcry 
from the Egyptians. 

Now it was different. Now there was a nation- 
al appeal for universal education. There was an 
awakened interest among rich and educated 
Egyptians for lowly Egypt. There was a new 
national consciousness. 

This from a mud village along the sleepy old 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

Nile. It was the voice of Egypt and these men 
were talking for millions of simple farmer folks. 
In other villages and in the big cities I heard 
echoes of the same words. 

It wasn't a question of what was best or right 
or fair — ^it was the question of a national impulse. 
These people wanted to run their own affairs 
their own way. It was a national impulse that 
gained a driving force from the resentment of 
one of the strongest religions in the world — 
Islamism. Fundamentally Islamism is opposed 
to Christian Europe and this new idea of Eastern 
Nationalism only enlarges this gulf between the 
two great groups. 

Of the thirteen million Egyptians probably 
ninety per cent, belong to the two or three differ- 
ent branches of the Moslem faith. There are 
some eight hundred thousand Copts — the relics 
of a very early Christian faith — ^but just as in 
India where the Hindus and Moslems have joined 
together, so here in Egypt the Moslems and most 
of the Christians are now united in their fight 
for independence. 

During the war there was no trouble of conse- 
quence. Egypt was loyal, filled her quotas, raised 
great labor corps, and stuck. With victory for 
the British came an immediate demand for the 
recognition of Egyptian independence. Zaghlul 
Pasha, the most influential Egyptian politician, 
asked for permission to take a delegation to Paris 

49 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

to press Egyptian claims before the coming Peace 
Conference. This was November 13, 1918, and 
already they call it Independence Day in Egypt. 

Instead of landing in Paris, Zaghlul, Egypt's 
hero, eventually was taken to Malta. A terrible 
flare of revolt and bloodshed and race hatred 
was the result. Schools struck, government 
clerks refused to work, and the whole country 
dropped like a plummet into a bitter boycott 
against everything that had to do with the British 
or their government of Egypt. 

Friends hearing where Zaghlul had been taken, 
went to his home and told his wife that he was in 
Malta and safe. 

"What do I care about news of my husband," 
she is said to have cried. "I care only for Egypt, 
As long as she is in slavery I have no interest in 
my husband's health or his whereabouts." 

And this was in the dying East where women 
still hide their faces behind veils and hide their 
lives and hearts behind the eternal black curtains 
of outworn traditions and cruel superstitions. 

Children, schoolboys and girls, flocked through 
the streets, screaming their words "Vehvia 
istiklad" — Long live Independence! For four 
months there was not a school in Egypt open. 
Ignorant cotton farmers, like the fellaheen in the 
Nile villages I had visited, burned buildings and 
bridges and tore up railroad tracks. Many of 
them had only their bare hands to fight with, but 

50 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

they foiiglit with them. Finally the revolt was 
put down with a considerable loss of life, and 
Zaghlul with his Egyptian delegation was even- 
tually permitted to go to Paris. 

Lord Milner, at that time colonial secretary, 
came to Egypt to make a careful investigation. 
All Egypt boycotted him, saying that their only 
spokesman was Zaghlul and that he must deal 
with him. Eventually the two men were brought 
together and a plan for sweeping changes in the 
government of Egypt arrived at. 

But it was not to be. In the spring of 1921 Lord 
Milner was eased out of the British Cabinet and 
all that he had done toward a fair and satisfactory 
Egyptian settlement upset. And so again the 
fires of revolt burn up and down the great Nile 
Valley. Again there are Egyptian mobs and 
again British Tommies are ordered to fire into 
them. 

Zaghlul Pasha, the hero of millions of common 
Egyptians, arrested and spirited away, is held in 
exile in Ceylon, but his spirit still remains the 
inspiration for Egypt. 

''If the proposals for Egyptian independence 
fall through we shall use every weapon of bitter 
protest and resistance we can find," one of the 
leaders in Cairo explained to me. "We refuse 
to be ruled longer against our will. We are in 
no mood to be fooled with. Ninety per cent, of 
our people are standing shoulder to shoulder in 

51 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

these demands for independence, and if Britain 
refuse to recognize us then we shall start fresh 
revolts. They may for the present take only the 
form of intense passive resistance after the man- 
ner of Gandhi and India, but violence may break 
out at any time. There is a small group here, 
mostly rich men, who want England to retain her 
grip on Egypt, but they are more than offset by 
the extreme radicals who want England ta leave, 
lock, stock and barrel." 

This is nationalism, but it is nationalism made 
of the bricks of race feelings and bound together 
by the mortor of Moslem religion. It is difficult 
for the western world to realize that nationalism 
is a new thing for the East. There, for thousands 
of years, the loyalty has been to family and vil- 
lage and tribe and religion — and possibly to king. 
But until now there has never been that pride of 
country and flag that the West has developed. 

During the war Moslem fought against Moslem, 
and the German-conceived idea of a great Holy 
"War of Moslems against Christians fell flat like 
the rest of Germany's dreams. The Arabs 
around the holy Moslem city of Mecca followed 
their King Feisal and fought alongside British 
Tommies against the German-led Turks. When 
British planes dropped propaganda pamphlets 
within the crumbling walls of old Jerusalem, 
Moslems thought Britain meant her high-sound- 
ing phrases of self-determination — and these 

52 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

Moslem desertions helped materially to bring 
General AUenby victory. Since then they have 
had a large dose of the white man of Europe, and 
now they are dreaming of the good old days when 
they had only the indolent, inefficient Sick Man 
of Turkey to bother them. 

I spent an hour or two in a tiny harem — ^which 
sounds naughty and romantic, but which in this 
instance was only a small one-roomed building 
alongside the beautiful Mosque of Omar, on the 
site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. 
Two old sheiks met me there and we squatted 
cross-legged on the rug and talked of religion and 
politics and Turkey and England and white men 
and things in general. In addition to these two 
rich and prominent elders, a pair of old fellows 
who worked around the mosque came in and 
squatted alongside of us — the real social democ- 
racy of Mohammedanism. One made sweet, thick 
Turkish coffee over a charcoal brazier and served 
us ; and then drank out of the same little bowl. 

"Before the war we used to pray to God to rid 
us of the Turks, and now we pray God to rid us 
of the English,'' one of the elders said in a soft 
low voice. *'The British promised us they would 
free us from the Turks and help us establish a 
great Arabic state. We Moslems are fully seventy 
per cent, of the people here, but instead of help- 
ing us establish an Arabic state they are helping 
a Zionist minority of fifteen per cent, to rule us. 

53 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

*'We will never suffer that," he went on. 
**What we really want is a confederation of all 
the Moslem states of old Turkey. We can work 
out our own affairs then. We can have our reli- 
gion and our holy shrines and yet we can have 
nationalism too," 

"And about Kernel Pasha?" I asked, referring 
to the dashing young Turk who refused to recog- 
nize the Turkish peace treaty. 

The elder hesitated for a moment. "Of course 
we all believe in him now," he answered. "He's 
fighting our battles against Europe." They, like 
the rest of the great, sleepy East, were tired of 
Europe's interference. They wanted the West 
to leave them alone. 

While in Palestine it may not be fundamentally 
a racial or color question or a religious question, 
yet it certainly has to do with the people of that 
district running their own affairs. The fact that 
the immediate peace and prosperity of the com- 
munity probably depends on the presence of Brit- 
ish troops and Pax Britainiac, does not at all 
affect the fundamental proposition. The people 
native there simply want to govern themselves. 

Just as in India and Egypt where different 
religions and sects have combined to gain home 
rule, so there in those sun-lit holy hills of Judas 
one finds the Christians, numbering some fifteen 
per cent., combined with the Moslems, numbering 
certainly seventy per cent,, in a Moslem-Christian 

54 



THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

League. It is a combination to oppose the grow- 
ing strength of the Zionists who — within Pales- 
tine — have no real power without the support and 
drive of the British Government and the British 
troops. 

The white man has interfered again — and 
again he has gained only deep hatred as a reward. 
Go east across the Jordan and hit the long dusty 
trail to that ancient land between the Tigris and 
the Euphrates. Here Europe, searching for oil 
and new cotton-fields and undeveloped markets, 
has driven deep her stakes of influence — and the 
farmers of the great valley and the silent Arabs 
of the deserts have said ''NO! we don't want you 
or your governments or your western ways." 

Nationalism is something brand-new here. too. 
There is only the nationalism of the tent and the 
flock. There is almost as much difference be- 
tween these various Arab tribes as between the 
several peoples of Europe. 

Roughly speaking, there are three million peo- 
ple in Mesopotamia, divided up in six great tribes 
and some fifty smaller ones. But they are all 
men of one color and pretty much of one religion, 
and they are all against British interference. 

It is a romantic gamble — this billion dollar 
gamble that England is taking in Mesopotamia. 
After all, the oil that is to pay the piper is of un- 
certain quantity, but if it flows full and black a 
pipe line stretched from the oil fields to AUepo 

55 



THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 

on the Mediterranean would only be a stretch of 
some five hundred fifty miles — an eight-inch pipe 
line, eighteen inches under the ground, with only 
two great pumping stations, would do it. And 
the British fleet would he two or three weeks 
nearer its precious fuel supply. And control of 
Arabia, too, would guarantee a short-cut railroad 
route from the sea to India. 

But all this is mere speculation, while the deep 
growing hate of the East and the Near East is 
anything but speculation. As I have tried to 
make clear, the Moslems offer the closest bound, 
most virile organization against the West. There 
are some three hundred million of them scattered 
through Southern Asia and across Arabia and 
Northern Africa. 

They have no great central organization or di- 
recting force, but they have a deep-rooted reli- 
gion that lends itself easily to belligerency. Dur- 
ing the war the Central Powers attempted to turn 
it into a Holy War against the AlKes, but failed 
because the resentment against Europe was only 
beginning to seethe and because in many districts 
the native Moslems were bitter against their own 
Moslem masters — ^to wit, the Arab Moslems 
against the Turkish Moslems. 

With the war ended and the European nations 
splitting the spoils of the Near East among them- 
selves, the Moslems turned against Europe. At 
present all throughout the Moslem countries 

56 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

there has been great ranting and waving of arms 
over what is termed the Khalifat injustices. 

This is especially true in India where the sev- 
enty million Moslems have been whipped into a 
fury of religious hate by their leaders over what 
they believe to be the grave injustices done by 
England against them. 

Mohammed Ali, who shares with his fighting 
brother, Shaukat Ali, the distinction of leading 
Indian Mohammedans, talked with me a long time 
about all these questions. This man, Mohammed 
Ali, is a tremendous big, thick chested, black 
bearded man, who is frankly out to break Britain 
and gain independence for India at any cost. 
Late in 1921 these brothers were thrown in jail 
charged with preaching sedition among Indian 
troops. 

**We are body and soul in the revolution to free 
India from Britain," he screamed at me when 
I talked to him. "We are out to abolish the pres- 
ent system of British government in India, law 
or no law. We are with Mahatma Gandhi and his 
non-violent non-cooperating revolt, but if non-co- 
operation fails then we seventy million Moslems 
are allowed by our faith but two courses — we 
must either migrate from the country or declare 
a holy war against the British." 

Mohammed thundered away about what India 
had suffered from British rule and gently I led 
him back on the track. * 'What's all this Khalifat 
business r' I asked. 

57 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

''When England declared war against Tur- 
key," he explained, ''she announced to India that 
the war involved no religious question and the 
holy places of Islam, Mecca, Jerusalem, etc., 
would remain free as long as Turkey did not in- 
terfere with pilgrims visiting these holy places. 
Turkey never stopped pilgrims, yet to-day despite 
repeated pledges, all the holy places of Islam are 
directly or indirectly in British hands. 

* ' The Turkish treaty aims at the complete elim- 
ination of the Khalifat, which is the church or- 
ganization with a head who enjoys temporal 
power. The sultan has for years been the ac- 
cepted head. 

''During the World War thousands of Indian 
Moslems fought for the British on the definite 
pledge from Lloyd George that we were not fight- 
ing Turkey to deprive her of Constantinople or 
the rich and renowned lands of Thrace, which are 
predominantly Turkish in race. 

"All these pledges have been violated; the holy 
places have been attacked ; the sultan detained in 
Constantinople as a sort of hostage ; Thrace and 
Smyrna, the richest parts of Asia Minor, handed 
to Greece, while over the holy places of Islam, 
mandates have been established which neither 
Palestine, Syria or Mesopotamia want. England 
has been to blame for all this and only by restor- 
ing the power of the head of the Moslem faith will 
Indian Mohammedans be satisfied. Let all the 

58 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

different districts of Asia Minor form their own 
governments with as much autonomy as they 
wish, all to fuse in some federation with the 
Turks. Until England rights these Khalifat 
wrongs and gives India home rule, there will be 
no truce. We will accept no compromise." 

But these are fine colorful words. They are 
words to thrill Moslems and to make them hate 
the British. I talked with many educated and 
intelligent Moslem leaders about them. A few 
of these leaders freely admitted they were just 
words — words to stir up the ignorant common 
Mohammedan against foreign domination. 

Which is to say they were using religion as a 
political weapon. Religion comes as the last of 
all the great surges that make men die in num- 
bers — struggle for existence, race, nationalism 
and religion. Yet religious wars have been and 
can be as bitter and desperate as any other 
struggle. 

After all, religion is deep — and nowhere are its 
roots so firmly implanted as in the backwaters 
of civilization. It was in the Khyber Pass — the 
great gateway between Central Asia and India — 
that this struck me most forcibly. 

It was late in the afternoon and the cool of the 
approaching evening was keeping pace with the 
lengthening shadows of the great bare mountains. 
Every rock and shrub was reeking with romance. 
It was the Pass of the Ages. Through its tor- 

59 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

turous fifty miles of narrow road the Arions — the 
white men from some early cradle of civilization 
— had fought their way southward into the rich 
plains of India. They had stayed on as rulers, 
and slowly the blazing Indian sun had browned 
them. To-day, ten or fifteen thousand years 
later, they are still the ruling caste of all India — 
the Brahmins. And hundreds of years later the 
hard riding Eastern nomads, thirsty for conquest 
and loot, had whipped their shaggy ponies 
through this same Pass of Romance. 

No other single spot in the world could tell 
such tales of wonder and war and adventure and 
romance; its deep sides still echo these tales. 
And Romance and Adventure still live there. 

This day the sun was just dropping and eve- 
ning now would come on with a rush. The foot 
road and the motor road that for miles run one 
above the other on the mountain sides, like par- 
allel snakes, drew together and now ran side by 
side. A tired dusty camel-train choked the soft 
foot road. They were carrying rugs from Bok- 
hara and fruits from Afghanistan and Romance 
from Back There. Suddenly they halted and the 
camel men silently spread out their worn and 
dusty prayer-rugs and began their evening devo- 
tion. 

These were men — ^men of the Old East — tired 
men, brave men, men of different standards of 
conduct and life from us of the "West. They 

60 



THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

wouldn't have hesitated in the least to have 
robbed me or killed me — and here they were on 
their knees before the dropping sun. Five times 
each day they unrolled their prayer-mats. This 
is the religion that to-day stands like a citadel 
against the interference of the West. Three hun- 
dred million obey its sacred orders. 

That night I was chatting with a British offi- 
cial in his office at Peshawr. He was telling me 
about the two million Moslem tribesmen who live 
in tiny villages perched like eagles' nests among 
these great hills of the Himalayas of Northwest- 
em India. He explained how backward they 
were, how brutal their civilization ; he told about 
the family and village blood feuds that are passed 
down from one generation to another sometimes 
resulting in the extermination of whole families. 

He explained, too, how these two million tribes- 
men, with their four hundred thousand men, all 
armed with rifles of some sort, and all fighters 
by instinct and wish, are the most difficult mili- 
tary problem that the British Government in 
India has had to solve in the past. Religious al- 
most to a degree of fanaticism, they have always 
been at the call of their half -mad mullahs — Mos- 
lem leaders — as well as being amenable to money 
and religious influences from their Moslem broth- 
ers in the great backward country of Afghanis- 
tan, lying to their north and west, separating 
India from Eussia proper. 

61 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

These different tribes, with their tribal hates 
and jealousies, have been kept in hand through 
a liberal use of money and the British Indian 
Army. Peace here has been bought. In the past 
money has had a great deal to do with keeping 
peace with Afghanistan, as well. For almost a 
half-century the great duel for the control of 
Afghanistan went on between the British and 
the Russians. By the power of persuasion and 
the threat of invasion and the liberal use of money 
the amir of Afghanistan had been kept under the 
spell of the British political agents. 

In 1876 the old amir consolidated the country 
following an Afghan war. Toward the end of 
the last century he died and his son succeeded 
him. As in the case of his father, the British paid 
him for his loyalty and for continuing to act as 
a buffer state between India and Russia. 

During the Great War the amir flirted with 
German and Turkish missions, but all in all 
played fair with the British. He could handle his 
foreign affairs fairly satisfactorily, but when it 
came to palace intrigues and family quarrels he 
wasn't quite man enough. 

His favorite wife, the mother of his third son, 
jealous of her waning power, engineered a con- 
spiracy with her son, which ended with the old 
amir getting the poisoned coffee handed to him. 
A brother of the old amir started to take a hand 
then, but the third son grabbed the capital, 

62 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

Kabul, captured the army and the treasury and 
throwing the uncle and one of his own brothers 
into prison, declared himself amir. This hap- 
pened in February, 1919, and is interesting only 
as it gives a sidelight on the adventure of politics 
in Afghan. 

The young amir profited by all the anti-British 
sentiment and believing that the revolt in India 
was certain, started a little private war of his 
own against the British. Our Khyber Pass, 
highly amused, was the scene. 

The British were not worried by the amir's 
stage army, but they were worried over what the 
four hundred thousand armed Moslem tribesmen 
of this Northwest Frontier would do if the thing 
was put on a religious basis and a Holy War 
declared. So a peace was hurried up ; money was 
passed and a settlement patched up. 

But the four hundred thousand tribesmen, with 
their fighting religion, still squat in the doorway 
of their tiny walled villages or, slipping out into 
the sunshine, take pot shots at British Tommies 
from behind friendly boulders. As long as Bri- 
tain remains in India these tribesmen will be a 
growing menace. They are a strange breed and 
they bring strange men into the world. 

This night as I sat with the British official one 
of his Moslem soldiers came into the office and 
announced that a boy was outside and wanted to 
see him. The Englishman ordered him to be ad- 

63 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

mitted and suggested that I wait and see what it 
was all about. 

In a minute or two a little fellow of about seven 
or eight years stepped into the room and without 
the degrading subservience one sees throughout 
all Hindu districts, boldly stepped forward and 
without the slightest embarrassment walked to 
the official's desk. 

**Did you send for me, sir?" he asked directly. 

"Yes. Your father was an Indian soldier and 
died in service. I have five hundred rupees that 
the great British Government has sent me to give 
to you, his only son, as reward for his service. 
Do you want this money now?" 

The boy hesitated. He had walked a dozen 
miles along the mountain trails in answer to this 
summons from the great white official. It was 
probably the first time he had ever been that far 
away from his tiny village with its mud wall and 
its adobe tower, where every one gathered at 
night for defense against a possible raid from 
some enemy village. 

He'd never seen a picture-show — ^he didn't 
know there was such a thing. Life was very real 
and very hard for him, and often very bitter. 
The civilization that was molding him was a civ- 
ilization of thousands of years ago — and one of 
bleak hills and biting days. It was a poor civili- 
zation compared to our own electric-heated, self- 
starter, rubber-tired civilization. 

64 



THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 

"Shall I keep the money for you or do you 
want me to give it to you now?" the wise and 
kindly official asked again. 

*'You keep it for me," this seven-year-old hill- 
boy finally replied. "If you give it to me either 
my relatives will steal it, or my mother will take 
it from me and spend it on her new husband. 
You keep it for me and some day when I am a 
man I will buy a rifle with it. ' ' 

I smiled when I thought of the candy and the 
red balloons and toy street-cars my own little boy 
would havef demanded, had he, of the rubber- 
tired age, been offered money. Then a lump came 
into my throat when I thought of this splendid 
half-man going back on foot to his filthy mud 
village to dream there of the day when he would 
be old enough to go again to the white official 
and get his money and buy a contraband rifle and 
settle some ancient family quarrel — or a new 
quarrel of race and country and religion a million 
times greater. 

I wondered which quarrel this boy of seven 
would be busy with at seventeen. 



CHAPTEE III 

YOUNG CHINA 

I HOLD that it is something to discover that an 
ancient race is really young and virile after all, 
and that a nation that had been thought back- 
ward, decadent and inferior has greatness and 
majesty and humanness. 

This, to me, is China — Young China — New 
China. And this that follows is the story of the 
tremendous revolution, the great renaissance, 
the awakening of the millions of common Chinese 
from the sleep and superstitions of centuries. 

Four hundred million of them there are. 
That's four times as many people as we have in 
America — and a good deal more than the total 
population of all Europe, excluding Russia — and 
within one hundred and fifty million of the white 
population of the entire world. 

Theirs is the oldest civilization; they are the 
greatest propagandists; they are the most suc- 
cessful colonizers; they are the most industrious 
of the nations ; they are the master egoists ; they 
have the greatest power of resistance — and they 
are the champion smilers. 

Down in the Shanghai country I saw a Chinese 

66 



YOUNG CHINA 

version of our own Uncle Tom's Cabin. The 
man who transported it across the Pacific was 
not bound down by any of the ordinary ethics of 
authorship. The colored folks were kept intact 
and played by Chinese actors without burnt cork, 
but Simon Legree was none other than Yaman- 
iato Nakagawa, a Japanese slave driver imported 
direct from the rice paddies. 

This was where the plot thickened. Yaman- 
iato, the Simon Legree of the piece, gave old 
Chinese Uncle Tom a terrible whaling and then 
practised on the other slaves. The audience, busy 
with munching their watermelon seeds, didn't 
mind it the least until they discovered that these 
coolies were getting just what they deserved for 
permitting the Japanese to come into their coun- 
try and bully them. Then they howled in good 
Chinese: "Kill him! Throw him out!" 

The Japanese menace had hit home. It was 
evident that the only thing to do was for all China 
to go on an anti-Japanese strike and force the 
little tan cousins to go back to their island. 

Propaganda, of course! I mentioned above 
that China was the greatest propagandist in the 
world. Consider what she has done to the visitors 
living within her borders. 

There are some forty thousand or fifty thou- 
sand foreigners residing in China and every one 
of them stands ready to make any sacrifice to the 
end that China may be preserved from the ambi- 

67 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

tions of Japan. Let an innocent traveler show 
the slightest sympathy for Japan's point of view 
and the wrath of the gods falls on his head. A 
hundred resident foreigners take his comment as 
a personal affront. Long before he passes half- 
way throngh the treaty ports he's either been 
branded *'N. G." by his own conntrymen or else 
he's been converted into a Chinese booster, and 
has joined the long list of volunteers who stand 
ready at any moment to give their lives for China 
against Japan. 

Nothing wrong with that only the Chinese 
themselves are far too philosophic to worry them- 
selves sick over such a question as Japanese in- 
trusion when everything is going to come out all 
right in the end. Simply outwait them — or play 
one against the other or let the thing drag. Why 
rush out and get shot up? Smile your way 
through — and let the other fellow stop the bullets. 

After all, he is a tremendously human and in- 
teresting and wise fellow, this smiling Chinese. 
There's an old saying that a smile will take yon 
further in China than anywhere else in the world. 
I believe it — and a smile takes the Chinese fur- 
ther, too. It has taken them ten thousand years 
down the long trail and will take them another 
ten thousand. 

But our friend One Lung not only smiles but he 
works. He is industrious beyond belief. He 
:works harder and longer and more consistently 



YOUNG CHINA 

and for less pay than any one else in the world. 
Many of ns think of the Japanese as being master 
toilers : they would starve in China. Incidentally, 
Japan has her owti exclusion law against Chinese, 
and during the World War when a Japanese mine 
owner imported some twenty-seven thousand 
Chinese laborers the Japanese Government 
turned them around and waltzed them right back 
to the continent. 

And they really are the greatest egoists in the 
world. Certainly three hundred and ninety-nine 
million out of the four hundred million consider 
their culture and civilization with its five thou- 
sand years of history as the beginning and end of 
all things. A Chinese houseboy "knows he is 
superior in every way to the foreigner whom he 
serves. The houseboy can cheat him and not be 
found out; he can loaf on the job and not be fired; 
he can divide up among four Chinese men the 
house work that one servant could easily do. And 
the same idea goes right on up through the dif- 
ferent social classes. 

What I'm trying to say is that fundamentally 
China believes in herself. Way down deep in the 
heart of the Chinese people there is no great fear 
regarding Japan or any one else. They do, of 
course, fear for the immediate future, but basic- 
ally and fundamentally they believe themselves 
vastly superior to any race. 

I took a ten-day journey with a high Chinese 

69 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

railroad official. This man held two degrees 
from American universities and he was about as 
thoroughly Americanized as any Oriental ever 
becomes — which is about ten per cent. 

We talked and we sparred and we played poker 
with words and finally the last day we were 
together I told him it was my opinion that China 
would have to help herself, that nobody was going 
to do much for her. It was all right to ask for 
advice, and good will, and all that sort of thing, 
but in the end she would have to take care of her 
Japanese menace herself. 

''Well," he said slowly after a pause, *'we are 
not worrying so much about Japan as you may 
think. Of course things are very discouraging 
now, but we are awakening the consciousness of 
China and for the first time instilling an idea of 
nationalism and patriotism into our common peo- 
ple — and we are doing it through preaching Jap- 
anese hatred. We'll get along all right. It 
may take us fifty or a hundred or possibly several 
hundred years, but in the end our superiority will 
tell and our civilization will dominate theirs." 

That 's China ! Here is Japan bribing govern- 
ment officials, shoving her wishes down Chinese 
throats mth bayonets, but deep in their celestial 
hearts not one drop of real fear. The corrupted 
Peking officials who would sell China to the high- 
est bidder and who may at this very moment be 
taking their orders from the Japanese minister, 

70 



YOUNG CHINA 

believe Japanese domination is only a temporary 
affair. 

Maybe tbey are right. China understands the 
expensive lesson that Germany has been taught 
— while Japan has only begun to learn it. And 
China knows that if she waits long enough she can 
outwait even Japan. She believes that the whirl- 
igig of time may bring forth some champion who 
will fight her battles for her, perchance uncon- 
sciously, just as the Allies fought her battles 
against Germany. In her five thousand years 
she 's seen young champions by the score — Greece, 
Eome, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, all of 
them in turn — conquer and dominate for a while 
and then go down. And while others have been 
fighting and struggling she has quietly and peace- 
fully penetrated all of Eastern Asia. 

No colonizer in the world compares with her. 
Her people are slipping into Siberia by the thou- 
sands; at first they are the hewers of wood and 
the drawers of water — then they become the small 
retailers — then the wholesalers — then the big 
merchants. Everywhere throughout Eastern 
Asia and in many of the islands of the sea it has 
come about in this way — the world fights while 
China trades and colonizes and propagates. 

They work like a great family of ants attack- 
ing a sleeping enemy; slowly, methodically, end- 
lessly they creep over their victim. Nothing 
daunts them — nothing can stop them. They're 

71 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

a superior race. They're the only race in the his- 
tory of the world that has ever completely ab- 
sorbed the Jews. It's a clean record. 

Some two thousand years ago there was a large 
Jewish colony in China. To-day every trace of 
it is gone. Great China slowly, patiently digested 
it. 

Patience — ^probably that describes China bet- 
ter than any other single word. It's the keynote 
to their home life, their national life and the very 
pass word to their foreign policies — ^patience and 
a certain deep-rooted sense of justice and a 
knowledge that things that are not settled rightly 
are never really settled. 

For fifty centuries these two things — ^patience 
and justice — and the power of ''face" have run 
China. Chinese "face" — class, or standing or the 
respect of your fellow man — is the strangest 
moral code in the world and one of the most effec- 
tive. China has never had written laws as we 
understand them. In many ways her commu- 
nities have been the only examples in the world 
of pure anarchial states. They've simply run 
themselves. The central government has let the 
provinces go ahead unheeded as long as the 
provincial governors have "come across" regu- 
larly with the taxes. The governors, in turn, 
haven't bothered the district magistrates so long 
as they passed the tribute on up ; and the district 
magistrates have never interfered with the peo- 

72 



YOUNG CHINA 

pie at all so long as they stood quietly while the 
taxes were tied on them. It's all amounted to the 
simple formula of the people saying, ''You leave 
us alone and we'll pay you taxes," while the 
rulers have echoed back, "You pay taxes and 
we'll leave you alone." 

And within the individual communities the 
great moral law that 's kept them going peacefully 
and securely has been the law of "face." Con- 
fucius taught an inverted Golden Rule that said, 
"Do not do to others what you would not have 
them do to you," and the unwritten code tacked 
on to this "or you'll lose face." 

A foreigner's banking partner would hesitate 
to indulge himself in too sharp a deal because if 
he were found out he would lose "face" among 
his fellows. A foreigner's houseboy doesn't dare 
knock down beyond his ten per cent., because if 
he is caught and discharged he 'd lose a great deal 
of "face" among other houseboys. A rich man 
must treat wife No. 2 according to custom or he 
loses "face" tremendously. 

China, by and large, is run on "face," and it 
works out vastly better than it sounds, for, fun- 
damentally, the Chinese are an honest and up- 
right people. They look you straight in the eye — 
and while they don't tell you to go to blazes they 
do smile straight at you. They're superior — 
they're not the downtrodden, worthless, spine- 
less people the story-books say they are. They 

73 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

couldn't have lived and resisted pressure as they 
have had there not been something fine and great 
and distinctly superior about them. 

A young American missionary named Jimmy 
Hunter, who used to be champion quarter miler 
of the University of Illinois, took me for a week's 
trip into the district to the north of Peking to 
study the common country folk. All one needs 
to do is to go five miles away from the railway 
or from a treaty city to drop back five thousand 
years into the very center of ancient China. 

We had a springless Peking cart drawn by a 
shaggy Mongolian pony, and we split our time 
between sitting on the shaft of the cart and rid- 
ing on our two undersized donkeys. It was in the 
very early spring; the snow had gone but April's 
green brush had not yet painted out the winter's 
brown. 

We had nowhere particular to go and nothing 
particular to see. We just jogged our way 
through deep-rutted mud roads from one old 
walled village to another. At night we would 
stop in the village inn and after our supper wan- 
der on "down-town" and into the grocery store 
for an hour's gossip. 

Dried peppers and rows of onions and knick- 
knacks hung from the low ceiling. Usually there 
was a counter and behind it, next the wall, open 
bins for sugar and rice and ground wheat and 
spices. Most of the purchases were for a penny 

74 



YOUNG CHINA 

or twos' worth of stuff — China is very poor and 
the margin of existence is a pathetically narrow 
one. The store was the village club and all the 
old fellows with their thick skirts and padded 
short jackets wandered on down-town just as they 
do every^\^here else in the world. 

It was like being back home. The loafer, the 
joker, the alarmist, the skinflint and the village 
drunkard, were all taken right out of the picture 
from the General Store in the little old home 
town. You could pick them out as soon as they 
came in. 

I think I enjoyed those hours sitting around on 
a home-made chair propped against the wall talk- 
ing through a sympathetic interpreter to common 
China, as much as I have enjoyed any hours in 
my life. We talked about crops and they told 
me that most of the farmers around there — they 
all live in the villages and go out to their bits of 
ground to work — owned on an average of two 
acres each and rented an acre or two more from 
old Chang Tong, and that they had to give half 
they raised as rent. 

Crops had been poor that year, they went on. 
Some parts of China had suffered from famine 
and thousands had died. Coolies somewhere 
about were always dying, but that couldn't be 
helped. 

They weren't worrying much about the Japan- 
ese out here in those villages; all they wanted 

75 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

was to be left to run their own affairs as they had 
been doing for five or ten thousand years. Some 
of the young men of the villages attended Peking 
schools and when they came back during their va- 
cations they told how terrible the Japanese were 
and said that the Chinese must not buy or use 
anything the Japanese made. If they couldn't 
find what they needed in Chinese made goods, 
then they should buy American goods. America 
was good to them in a hundred ways, they said: 
America gave them schools and universities and 
doctors and hospitals and new ideas of govern- 
ment and new national ideals. 

It was the West but particularly America 
creeping in slowly but surely. And China needs 
America. That was the one great discovery I 
made in this little invasion of common China — 
that and the fact that these were ordinary human 
beings who suffered from ordinary ills and 
dreamed ordinary dreams and wanted to get 
ahead so that their sons and their families could 
have a little better place in the community. 

They needed our high standards of living and 
our squarer dealing in the treatment of women, 
and a little of the brotherhood of all men that 
Christ taught. They needed to be shown that 
the scale of living and the ethics of living of the 
best of America would make them happier and 
better. 

They needed new ideas of sanitation and health 

76 



YOUNG CHINA 

and education and modern agricultural methods. 
They needed complete modernization of their 
practical affairs. 

* 'What's worrying me/' Jimmy Hunter said 
one morning as we passed a dozen *' razor-backs " 
that were half head and half legs, "is how I can 
improve the swine in this part of the country. 
These pigs are nothing but bone and bristle — 
what they need is some good American stock 
crossed with theirs." 

It was the new type of American missionary in 
China talking. There's a saying over here now 
that it's harder to be sent to China as a mission- 
ary than to get into the United States Consular 
Service. I don't vouch for that but I do vouch 
for the statement that the new missionary is not 
worrying so much about propagating religion as 
he is about disseminating ideas of clean living and 
sanitation and independence and patriotism 
among young Chinese. 

No foreign influence so far has more than 
scratched China. The country is so large and so 
old and its superstitions are so ancient and its 
customs so deep rooted that for China to change 
would be almost like Nature altering her features. 
In the home life the man is still the one master 
and lord. The woman's place is distinctly a sec- 
ondary one. Her great task is to bear male chil- 
dren who will worship the memory of their father. 
If a woman fails to bear children then the master 

77 



THE EISINa TEMPEE OF THE EAST 

can either get himself Wife No. 2 or divorce No. 
1, and marry again. And marriages, incidentally, 
are always performed in the home of the bride- 
groom ; — again the men show their superior place. 

Very, very slowly some of these customs are 
changing — and the American missionaries have 
had more to do with these changes than all the 
other foreign influences in China put together. 
Civilizations that have existed for hundreds and 
thousands of years necessarily have developed 
tremendous powers of resistance, and they resist 
good innovations the same as evil ones. This 
old civilization of China, I repeat, has hardly 
been scratched. 

Take, for instance, the Province of Shantung 
that the Germans had marked off for their own 
until the Japanese took it as their share of the 
spoils of the War. There are thirty million 
Chinese in this one province and I suppose alto- 
gether possibly three thousand Japanese. A 
German-built railroad runs from the German- 
built city of Tsingtau on the coast, back to Tsi- 
nanfu, the capital. It is a scratch on the surface 
of Shantung. 

The thirty million go peacefully ahead, planting 
their wheat and weaving their hair nets. To the 
millions of farmers in their thousands of hidden 
villages it doesn't matter a great deal whether the 
Germans, the Japanese or Fiji Islanders own and 
operate that scratch of steel across Shantung. 

78 



YOUNG CHINA 

The days I was there the anti-Japanese boycott 
was booming and China was not using the rail- 
road. Merchants were having their goods 
shipped by the wheel-barrow route instead of by 
the railroads. Day and night the road paralleling 
the railway track echoed with the ceaseless 
squeak of the high, single-wheeled barrows teach- 
ing Japan that it was better business to treat 
China fairly. Coolies walked the dusty miles 
between stations rather than contribute copper 
pennies to the hated Japanese. These were the 
coolies of the cities, — those of the country hardly 
knew there was such a thing as a railroad. 

The very oppression and domination by Japan, 
it seemed to me, were doing something that noth- 
ing else could do, — they were tending to awaken 
China to the necessity of unity and patriotism and 
modernization. The boycott was shaking China 
from her lethargy. 

Even these sleepy, lost villages were beginning 
to feel it a little. It was getting into the army, 
too. 

I smile when I think about this wonderful army 
of China. Chinese soldiers will give you a laugh 
twenty-four hours a day — there are one million 
three hundred thousand of them and that's one 
million three hundred thousand laughs. 

Troops, according to China, are for stage pur- 
poses and not for real fighting. Judged by the 
number of soldiers under arms, China this minute 

79 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

is one of the greatest military nations in the 
world — but she isn't to be taken seriously, except 
locally. And locally she is anything but the paci- 
fist country she's cracked up to be. Her govern- 
ment is a purely militaristic one ; her armies cost 
her sixty-five per cent, of her total income. 
That's double what she spends for all other state 
purposes put together — except interest on the 
national debt — and six times what the whole coun- 
try spends on public education. Incidentally she 
is spending at present more than tmce as much 
on her soldiers as she spent in the fine old mili- 
taristic days of the Manchu dynasty, twelve or 
thirteen years ago. 

These humorous, padded soldiers, who declare 
armistice for tea, have been one of the great 
curses of China. To appreciate what they've 
meant we must go back to the formation of the 
republic. The government then under the Man- 
chus was strongly centralized as regards military 
power. "With the revolution Yuan Shi-Kai, the 
first regular president, dreaming of another mon- 
archical dynasty, set about to build up a great 
personal national army. For this purpose he 
used up a reorganization loan and shouldered on 
the Peking Government a big army. 

With his death the army broke up into many 
parts and the day of the powerful military gov- 
ernor, who was a law unto himself, came. The 
Peking Government had no great army of its own 

80 



YOUNG CHINA 

and lived only through the shifting balance of 
military power that kept its officials in office. 
This was the condition when America entered the 
World War. 

Most of the Chinese at this time were fairly 
apathetic about the war. They were not violently 
pro-anything. During the spring and summer of 
1917 when it seemed quite reasonable that the 
Germans might win the war or at least tie it, 
there were a good many Chinese who were very 
friendly toward the Germans. They reasoned 
that the Germans might win and if they did it 
was not at all improbable that Japan might make 
a new alliance with Germany and Russia. China 
could not afford to be against any such combina- 
tion. 

Then many of the Chinese felt that if China 
entered the war it would be to help England — 
and they were strongly anti-English. Besides, 
the German merchant and commercial man here 
had treated the Chinese carefully and as an equal 
and many Chinese liked them personally. 

America brought China into the war. Liberal 
China, which has always been friendly with 
America, wanted to be with us — and the militar- 
ists saw a chance to get the great national army 
they had dreamed of. So China was swung into 
the war on August 14, 1917. Before this Japan 
had bought a hold on the military politicians of 
Peking and the then premier, Marshal Tuan Chi- 

81 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Jui, leader of the Anfu-Club, had dissolved Par- 
liament, opening afresh the old struggle between 
the North and the South. 

The result of all this was that China, officially 
in the war, borrowed money and raised a special 
national army of some four hundred thousand. 
The patriotic men of the government wanted this 
army sent to France so that it would give China 
an advantageous position at the peace table; but 
the ambitious military politicians wanted the 
army only to hold their own power. America 
refused to lend them money to build up this fight- 
ing force, so they turned to Japan. In the forty- 
eight months preceding September, 1918, fifty- 
one loans, totaling three hundred million dollars, 
were made by Japan. 

Most of this money went for military pur- 
poses and resulted in the formation of a great 
northern army that has been more or less under 
the direct influence of Japanese military officers. 
This army kept the corrupt and inefficient Pek- 
ing officials in power and drew tighter the stran- 
glehold that Japan had on the Chinese Govern- 
ment. It kept the four hundred million people 
of China under the heel of the Peking militarists 
and the different military governors, and in turn 
held these military politicians under the spell of 
Japan. 

China to-day is really less of a republic than 
Japan is — and Japan to-day is hardly more than 

82 



YOUNG CHINA 

an echo of the Germany of Bismarck. The gov- 
ernment instead of being a responsible democracy 
is nothing short of a military autocracy — or 
rather a collection of military autocracies. It is 
uncontrollably decentralized to the extent that 
the real power rests in some twenty tu-chuns or 
military governors of provinces, each of whom 
has his own army and belongs to some clique of 
fellow tu-chuns that controls combinations of dif- 
ferent tu-chuns. And they have one million three 
hundred thousand of these non-fighting soldiers 
of theirs, drawing six silver dollars a month, 
which they mostly don't get, and living off the fat 
and lean of the land by streaks. 

Most of all this is a pessimistic picture for a 
nation that some day is going to take its rightful 
place among the great nations of to-morrow. But 
China is going to win because to-day Cliina is 
reeking with revolutions: every kind that the 
world has ever known, except a fighting revolu- 
tion, is going on there this very second. As fast 
as she can she is tearing down the great walls of 
tradition and ignorance and stupidity and letting 
in the winds of truth and hope and justice from 
the West. And just as fast as she can she is un- 
loosening the foot-binding that has bound her to 
an outworn past with all its stupid cruelties. 

In the spring of 1920, the first five girl students 
were permitted to enroll in the Government Uni- 

83 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

versity in Peking. It is not an item that would 
*'make" the front page of very many American 
dailies, hut it is one of far more real significance 
that ninety-nine out of a hundred first-page 
stories. It was a harhinger of the emancipation 
of Chinese women. Here were Chinese girls 
fighting their way before the public gaze as the 
full equals of men. 

Woman's place around the home is still a 
submerged one, but the woman's revolution is not 
going to be denied. Our mission teachers and 
preachers have a tremendous amount to do with 
this and in thousands of homes scattered about 
great China the emancipation of the women is as 
real a thing as the physical unbinding of their 
tortured feet. It is a part of the great moral 
revolution that is sweeping over the country and 
will change all the stupid, cruel customs just as 
the connnercial revolution is changing old style 
business methods of China and unloosening a 
great tide of industrial awakening. 

But the greatest revolution of them all is the 
one that centers around the student movement. 
Here is the heart and head and hope of Young 
China. It would take a book to tell about this 
great movement and the tremendous influence it 
has already had on the life and future of these 
gentle, smiling, backward four hundred millions- 
It is the biggest thing that has ever happened 
to China. No concrete movement and no single 

84 



YOUNG CHINA 

action has ever had the instantaneous effect that 
this great student mass movement has had. This 
can be partly accounted for on account of the 
unique position that the student occupies and has 
always occupied in the consideration of common 
China. For thousands of years she has picked 
all her officials by competitive examination from 
among her students and this quite naturally has 
placed the student body in a singular place of re- 
spect and admiration by the great unlettered 
masses. 

To get the full story of the Chinese student 
movement we must go back to May 3, 1919. This 
was in the days of the Paris Peace Conference, 
when Doctor C. T. Wang and Wellington Koo of 
the Chinese delegation were putting up their 
brave and losing fight against the rape of Shan- 
tung by the Japanese. 

There was a little too much publicity about the 
whole Shantung proposition to suit the Japanese 
delegation so cables were passed and orders 
given, and shortly the Japanese minister at Pe- 
king brought pressure to bear on the Chinese Gov- 
ernment for the recall of Wang and Koo from the 
Paris delegation. 

The word of this protest spread like wildfire 
through the mysterious underground news chan- 
nels that are everywhere in the East, and on the 
fourth day of May a great mass meeting of the 
students of Peking was called openly to protest 

85 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

against this interference. Several thousand stu- 
dents gathered that night and the tiny flame of 
patriotism suddenly blazed forth in a great fire 
of spirit that swept all over China. 

Instantly it was out of hand: before that first 
night was over the infuriated students attacked 
and tore down the home of Tsao Ju-ling, Chinese 
Minister of Finance and Communications, and 
credited with being the guiding spirit and paid 
agent of Japan's intrigues in Peking, and at the 
same time they assaulted Chang Chung Hsiang, 
Chinese Minister to Japan, and sent him to the 
hospital with severe injuries. 

That night thirty-two students were arrested 
and thrown into jail. The next day a general 
strike of the students was ordered: they would 
refrain from attending classes until these national 
wrongs were righted. 

This same day the president of China dismissed 
the chancellor of the University and issued a 
mandate forbidding student meetings. On May 
20th the Peking Students' Union was formally 
organized and on May 24th, a general strike of 
all the students in the city was ordered. 

The campaign was well thought out and care- 
fully executed. On June 3rd the ten thousand 
student agitators filtered into every corner of 
Peking and preached boycott and revolution. By 
nightfall three thousand were arrested and the 
halls of Peking University turned into a prison. 

86 



YOUNG CHINA 

The following day the students who were still 
free were again sent ont to spread the truth about 
the Peking Government and explain how China 
was being sold out to the Japanese. That day- 
thousands more were arrested. 

So far the great movement was limited to Pe- 
king. After this second day of general student 
arrest, however, Shanghai came to the rescue. 
Aroused by the students there, the merchants 
and common people of the international settle- 
ment and the native city went on a ten-day strike 
of protest, and not a wheel turned. Even the beg- 
gars struck. 

The government turned pale, and, shaking with 
fear, weakened before this tremendous demand of 
public opinion. 

The famous Twenty-one Demands that Japan 
forced China to agree to in 1915, coupled with all 
the aggressions of Japan before and after, 
brought on the boycott that these hundreds of 
thousands of students so gallantly championed 
and propagandized. Millions of Chinese villagers 
and coolies who knew Japan only as a name were 
swung into the most intense, bitter hate against 
her. In Shantung, as I have already described, 
hundreds of thousands of Chinese walked or rode 
on squeaky high-wheeled barrows, rather than 
pay one cent of tariff to the railroad that Japan 
had grabbed. Yangtsi River steamers flying 
Japanese flags plied up and down the river empty 

87 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

— ^in five months during the latter part of 1919, 
their average cargo dropped from one hun- 
dred and fifty-four tons a trip to less than five 
tons, and they carried practically no passengers 
at all. During the year that the boycott was 
pushed Japan's loss was fully forty per cent, of 
her gross trade with China and in certain sec- 
tions the decrease was probably ninety per cent. 

The students had furnished the match for all 
of this, but it was the small merchants of China 
who supplied the fuel that kept the boycott afire. 
These merchants with money and business to lose 
proved that China did have a certain patriotism 
and a tremendous weapon of resistance. They 
showed to the world that there are other effec- 
tive weapons of warfare besides poison gas and 
machine-guns. 

Slowly the fire of the boycott has died down, 
but it is still glowing and at any moment may 
flare up again. And it has taught tremendous 
lessons to Japan. It has proved that an un- 
friendly market is a poor market — and this 
knowledge has had not a little to do with the bat- 
tle now going on in Japan between the military 
and the commercial interests. 

Almost a year to a day after the birth of the 
great student movement the students again at- 
tempted a nation-wide protesting strike. This 
attempt failed to gain all its ends, but it is a fail- 
ure that has no particular significance because 



YOUNG CHINA 

the student movement is going forward with ever- 
increasing momentum. 

Slowly the revolt is broadening and outgrowing 
its original conception of a flaming political pro- 
test against the stupid unpatriotic actions of 
Peking officials in their dealings with aggressive 
Japan. To-day it is dreaming of the reformation 
of China — of breaking down the old walls of ignor- 
ance and poverty and traditions that hide China 
from the modern world. It is dreaming of educat- 
ing China's four hundred million common people 
and making them responsible citizens with new 
codes of living. 

The student leaders are still willing to carry 
on their fight against the inefficient, unpatriotic 
Government of Peking and against Japan with 
the boycott or any other weapon possible, but it 
is the broader vision of their great task that is 
inspiring them at present. This vision divides 
itself into two channels : one of social service and 
the other of a cultural reformation. They are 
both new to China. 

In the line of social service these student or- 
ganizations are doing wonderful things. They 
have established scores of free night primary 
schools for poor children and factory workers and 
they are giving their own precious time as teach- 
ers. They are going into the villages and cities 
during their vacations and hours off and preach- 
ing ideas of sanitation and health and right liv- 

89 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

ing. They are actually, physically reaching down 
and pulling China out of the past. 

In their dream of cultural reformation they 
vision a breaking of all the old traditions and cus- 
toms that bind China to so much that is unworthy 
in her old civilization. The "literary revolution" 
IS a big part of this. Started before the present 
student movement in an attempt to make the 
spoken language the written language in place of 
the old difficult and scholarly literary language, 
the literary revolt has been given force by the 
students. To-day more than three hundred little 
student publications are being printed in the style 
of the spoken language — a year ago there were 
only three liberal papers. The work is going 
ahead to do away with the thousands of Chinese 
characters and substitute a phonetic alphabet of 
thirty-nine letters as against our own of twenty- 
six. 

All in all it is a wholly new China for which 
these students are making sacrifices; a China 
where public opinion will have a place ; a China of 
good citizens with a good government; a China 
of unbound feet and emancipated women; a 
China of revolutions ; and a China that some day 
will have no fear of Japan and will be able to take 
her place in the family of nations as the great 
peace lover of the world. 

The West must recognize all this and change 
her whole view-point regarding China. England 

90 



YOUNG CHINA 

and France and Russia and Germany and Italy 
must completely revise all their ideas about this 
great land of the East. 

For a hundred years Europe has bullied and 
abused China, just as she has bullied and abused 
India, just as she has bullied and abused the half- 
billion other black, brown and yellow men of the 
East and Near East. And China, like the rest of 
the dominated races of the world, is getting tired 
of it all. Only America has treated her fairly. 
Following the Boxer uprising of 1900 America 
was the one country that turned back to China 
the huge indemnities exacted. (For four years 
the foreign diplomatic ministers in Peking com- 
pelled the poor bankrupt country to pay the an- 
nual Boxer indemnity to the powerless ex-Rus- 
sian legation, which is a hold-over of the old 
Romanoff days and represents no one. 

China has been fought over and quarreled over 
and split up into spheres of influence for a full 
century. Fortunately for the West, she is at this 
moment more anti-Japanese than she is anti-any- 
thing else. But the West must not forget that the 
Chinese are yellow men and have a great bond 
of color to link them with the yellow men of 
Japan. 

They know the history of the white invasion of 
China, they know of the British Opium War, and 
the grab for ports and the fights for concessions 
and the haggling and bullying and brow-beating 

91 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

by European diplomats and business concerns. 
They are tired of it. 

China is at the cross-roads, and America is 
the one great nation that she trusts and loves. 
We can show her the right road, — the trail that 
will help her develop herself, help her teach her- 
self, help her protect herself, and yet keep her 
the peace-loving, gentle, kindly, smiling country 
that she is. 



CHAPTER IV 

KAGAWA OF KOBE — THE STORY OF THE NEW JAPAN 

The story of the unrest of Japan differs fun- 
damentally from that of India and Egypt because 
here in Japan a most violent nationalism is 
already burning. The growing restlessness is 
expressed not against outsiders but against social 
conditions and the government itself. 

As the one country of the Old World that has 
withstood the encroachments of the white man, 
Japan for more than a decade has held a unique 
place. Since the defeat of the Russians at Port 
Arthur in 1904 she has been in a position for real 
eastern leadership. But she has recklessly squan- 
dered this in a wild debauch of ambitious impe- 
rialism. 

To-day the millions of China hate and fear 
Japan infinitely more intensely and bitterly than 
they despise the western nations. The seventeen 
million of Korea look upon her as a brutal con- 
queror. The millions of India have no faith in 
her quality of leadership and scoff at her shoddy 
tricks of trade: at the Indian National Con- 
gress held in October, 1921, a motion condemning 
Japan for her treaty association with England 

93 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

was passed by a large majority. And Indian 
merchants, deceived by cheap Japanese goods, 
have turned against everything that is Japanese. 

Japan's own ambitions — ^her imperialism and 
her dreams of conquest — ^would in time wreck 
themselves against the overwhelming numbers 
of the East, but there is something that keeps this 
from being necessary — ^New Japan itself. Kaga- 
wa of Kobe represents this New Japan — ^liberal, 
daring, hopeful, fine. 

Something about this man Kagawa of Kobe, 
makes me think of Mahatma Gandhi. Possibly it 
is because both are thin, emaciated, almost pitiful 
figures kept going by the blazing fire of their 
spirit. 

I suppose it is in this last — this spiritual fire 
— that lies the strongest resemblance. I'm sure 
their hearts beat the same tune. 

In India they call Gandhi, Saint Gandhi — and 
I'm certain that if these poor submerged out- 
casts of Kobe's underworld and the striving, half 
educated workers of the great shipyards and fac- 
tories could make Japanese saints they'd turn 
their Kagawa into one. 

I first heard of him at a thrilling labor meet- 
ing in Tokyo. A cordon of police stretched from 
the street to the entrance and once inside the 
assembly hall they lined the walls and strung 
like long arms down the aisles. 

Probably five hundred men were at this labor 

94 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

meeting and certainly no less than seventy-five 
policemen — who listened open mouthed to the 
speakers' magic plea for liberty and more rice 
while they preserved the majesty of worn-out 
laws. 

A liberal sprinkling of bine-capped students 
gave a tone to the crowd. For the most part the 
men were skilled workmen and petty clerks, with 
groups of students, but here and there you 
caught sight of the lettered jacket of some coolie 
— a coolie who only yesterday was a serf and 
to-day is fettered to a submerged class. 

A young boy in the uniform of a Tokyo mail 
carrier was the first to open the mouths of those 
undersized cops: "I work long hours and yet I 
must live in a cold unlighted room, and I am hun- 
gry, and ninety per cent, of the men who work 
with me want what I do — a real democracy and 
real freedom and real living wages." And the 
police, thinking of their own half -filled rice bowls 
— the average wage of the Japanese policeman is 
something like ten dollars a month — forgot their 
majestic pose and became but striving hungry 
humans. 

But a minute later when a square-jawed coal 
miner from the striking districts began to tell 
how gendarmes and soldiers were beating up the 
miners in their camps a police captain loaded 
down with a half -ton of gold braid blew a whistle 
and the fight was on. It was a neat battle for a 

95 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

few moments and then while the crowd jeered, 
the officers carried out two men feet first. 

So it went for an hour. Once there was a fairly- 
general fight. That time I stood on my chair and 
almost cheered. It was good for your soul just to 
look on. The miracle had happened — the Japan- 
ese worm was turning. 

After this last "battle royal" I hummed my 
way out of the building. I was too happy to want 
to stay and face the prospect of having it all 
spoiled. Young Japan, it was clear now, was 
coming strong; let common ordinary folk really 
start fighting and dying for what they want and 
nothing can stop them. These common Japanese 
folk were no longer completely crushed by the 
threat of the emperor's gendarmes. They had 
crawled out from under the iron heels. 

This night a young student who was earning 
his way through college by working half time as 
a translator in one of the newspaper offices acted 
as my interpreter. He was eighteen and a proud 
and almost haughty Socialist — and chuck full of 
fight. He told me that he had turned naturally 
to Socialism on account of the injustices and 
social wrongs of Old Japan. 

"Are there many Socialists among the stu- 
dents?" I asked. 

"Not many are Socialists, but most of the stu- 
dents are against the present government," he 
answered. "They all want Japan to become a 

96 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

free democratic country. We are sick and tired 
of being ruled by the military party. And we 
are against Japan's imperialistic ambitions." 

''How about Japan's actions in China and Si- 
beria f" 

''We are all for the Chinese students, and our 
student organizations are in close touch with 
theirs. Of course we have always been against 
our government's policy in Siberia. We are 
fighting every move of our militarists. We are 
going to fight them until either they are killed or 
we are killed." 

I was glad to get him away from that strike 
meeting at the Y. M. C. A. My boy Socialist was 
too full of fight to be loose where the smoke of 
battle was so heavy and the fighting was so good. 
Then, too, he wanted to talk to me about his 
Young Japan — about how it had and would fight 
against the Old Japan. He said that Kobe and 
Osaka, where they had had the great rice riots 
and the big steel strikes, were the places to study 
New Japan — and that Kagawa of Kobe was the 
man to tell me about it. So I v/ent and sat at the 
feet of this "Saint of New Japan." 

Around Kobe they call him the Sensei of 
Shinkawa — the teacher of the slums of Shinkawa. 
His real name is Toyakiko Kagawa and since his 
graduation from Princeton, a few years ago, he 
has been giving his time to bringing a little touch 
of hope to the outcasts of Kobe and a little light 

97 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

to the bewildered lal3orers of the great Osaka and 
Kobe mills. He had secretly formed the Federa- 
tion of Labor of Western Japan, and it was his 
genins that had dreamed the idea of the great 
''Go Slow" strike. 

I wdsh you conld see these slums of his; tiny 
crooked alleys, less than four feet wide, banked 
on both sides with narrow, wooden dog kennels, 
six by eight feet square and probably five feet 
high. Here twenty thousand outcasts live like 
homeless dogs ; each human kennel crowded with 
squalling, quarreling creatures of filth and ver- 
min, rotting with crime and tuberculosis and 
disease. Outcasts of all kinds — whites, blacks, 
Eurasians, Chinese — dregs of an old, old East. 
God ! what a sore on the earth ! 

Crowding the doorways and filling the winding 
alley paths are hundreds of poor outcast children 
in filthy rags, whose eyes light up with happiness 
when they see Kagawa, this teacher of kindness, 
approach. For him it is always a triumphal 
march ; shrill little voices herald his coming, while 
thin, hungry, half-clad little bodies scramble to 
hold his hand or even to touch his kimono. No 
Pied Piper ever had a more mlling, joyful train. 

You follow him with real tears in your eyes — 
this teacher of Shinkawa — wan and undersized, 
smiling with warm brown eyes, preaching God; 
a young savior, walking among outcasts, mur- 
derers and broken lives of the lower depths, 
preaching a living, breathing Christianity. 

98 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

That first night I met him we wandered about 
these forbidden streets for an hour, and then he 
led the way to the blackened two-story mission 
house where he holds his little school, gives out 
his free medicines, and brings God to these God- 
forgotten people. I took off my shoes at the 
door, and in my stockinged feet walked up the 
stairs and into the matted and immaculate study. 
For hours we talked of '^ Dangerous Thoughts," 
and Kagawa told me the thrilling story of how 
Young Japan is opening her eyes, and seeing 
visions, and daring real democracy. 

"Dangerous Thoughts," the government here 
calls them. America would call them ''Inspiring 
Thoughts," "Glorious Thoughts," "Winning 
Thoughts," because they are all about the hope 
of a people struggling up to the light. And that 's 
the greatest gripping romance in the world — not 
the struggle and fight and dreams of individuals, 
but of millions opening their eyes for the first 
time, stretching themselves and realizing the 
power of their strength. 

It has been some time since the famous rice 
riots broke out in Kobe and spread over Japan, 
but they are well worth reviewing now because 
they prove this theory that the common people 
of Japan are not afraid to fight against the Old 
Order and the Things That Were — and that in- 
cludes imperialism and militarism in whatever 
disguise they may wear, 

99 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

The Great War brought Japan the commercial 
chances that she had long been dreaming of. 
Suddenly like the swing of a door all the markets 
in the Far East were magically opened to her. 
England and Germany and France, which for 
years had controlled the business of the Orient, 
were overnight removed from competition. Alone 
with America, Japan profited from the disasters 
of the others' war. Her shipping interests paid 
for their vessels in a single voyage; cotton mills 
declared one hundred per cent, dividends and 
gave away the rest of their profits in one form or 
another; a brand-new crop of millionaires 
sprang up like mushrooms after a spring rain — 
despised narikins who, lying back in pink uphol- 
stered foreign limousines, honk-honked the com- 
mon millions out of the narrow streets. And with 
every new nariJcin rice rose another notch. 

Then one September day a great mob gathered 
as if brought together by some magic magnet, 
and in the evening, moved by the same compel- 
ling force, swept along to the office of the big- 
gest rice dealer in Kobe. Suddenly a young 
man with chest bared to his waist leaped to the 
stone steps and waving an old Samuria sword, 
dramatically led the crowd of angry hungry work- 
men to destory the building. That was a real 
night in Japan. For forty-eight hours mobs 
roamed the streets of Kobe raiding rice shops — 
while the police, hungry, too, on their starvation 

100 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

salaries, looked on with a poor imitation of pre- 
serving order. 

The police would not and conld not stop those 
September mobs and it was necessary to call out 
the soldiers. The soldiers did their work, but 
it was whispered in a hundred governmental con- 
ferences that the police were not always to be 
depended on in hunger riots and that some of the 
soldiers too had shown little enthusiasm against 
the mobs. 

The government learned much from these rice 
riots. Before those mad days were over the riots 
had spread to two hundred and forty towns with 
a total damage of ten million dollars. Something 
had to be done to control this wild rush of an- 
archy. Instead of attempting to dam it the gov- 
ernment wisely tried to direct it into sane chan- 
nels. They winked at the formation of labor 
unions as the only safe outlet for the growing 
unrest. 

Eleven years ago a group of Socialists had 
thrown a chill over governmental circles with an 
attempted radical move, but that was years be- 
fore and easily solved. Twelve of the leaders 
were executed after a secret trial and another 
dozen sentenced to life imprisonment. But that 
was long before the word Bolshevism was even 
heard of. Times had changed and to-day they 
examine this word with fear and trembling. 

Japan did not gradually, patiently grow into 
101 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

a modern industrial system — it was thrust upon 
her full bloomed. Her society thirty years 
ago was a feudal system, and nothing could have 
so rapidly disintegrated this system as the mod- 
ern factory idea. Almost overnight it trans- 
formed men from peasants wading ankle deep in 
the muddy waters of the rice paddies to me- 
chanics sweating before their lathes. It created 
in a day a brand-new wage class, drafted from 
the simple peasants and fishermen. In 1887 there 
were only one hundred thousand factory em- 
ployees in Japan ; thirty-four years later the num- 
ber ran up to a million and a half. 

The patriarchal system still endured even in 
these modern factories. The workmen were 
bound to their masters by old-fashioned ties of 
loyalty and a system of bonuses that were gifts 
handed down from above. The national laws 
prohibited the formation of trade unions, and 
strike leaders could be and were thrown into jail 
and heavily sentenced. 

The war gave a tremendous boom to all Japan 's 
industries and with this boom came all the undi- 
gested social, economic problems that always ac- 
company too rapid expansion. "Wages rose but 
the cost of living climbed twice as fast. 

The rice riots were the inmaediate result. The 
next result was the formation of several near 
labor unions. For some time there had existed 
a very conservative union, the Yusiki (The 

102 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

Friendly Society of Japan) under the intense 
leadership of Bunji Suzuki, but this was too 
lukewarm and too pacific for the fighting Kagawa 
of Kobe, Immediately he set to work and brought 
to life a belligerent organization known as the 
Federation of Labor for West Japan. 

In a few weeks he had five thousand members 
and had started his own Laborer's News — and he 
succeeded in doing it without being arrested. As 
a consequence every liberal labor man in Japan 
blinked his eyes and hustled right out to estab- 
lish his own pet union. In Tokyo alone twenty- 
eight brand-new organizations were formed, 
ranging all the way from a Japanese I. W. W. to 
plain labor parties. 

Now and then a strike broke out, but, poorly 
led and unorganized, it usually collapsed. If it 
occurred in some great concern it would probably 
include only one or two departments and its doom 
was prepared in advance. If larger and better 
led, its leaders were most probably tossed in jail 
and permitted to cool off in damp cells. 

Almost a year to a day after the thrilling rice 
riots it was discovered that most of the sixteen 
thousand workmen in the great Kawasaki Dock- 
yards, in Kobe, where dreadnaughts, locomotives 
and everything to do with steel is made, were 
standing in front of their lathes and work-benches 
with folded arms or merely playing at work. Su- 
perintendents and managers tore their hair, but 

103 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

one thousand agitating members of the new Fed- 
eration of Labor of West Japan, scattered about 
the great plant, talked **Go Slow" — and after two 
weeks of going slowly the officials called in a 
delegation and promised them what they wanted 
— an eight-hour day and an increase in pay. It 
was the strangest sabotage strike in history, and 
the strikers won. Not a man quit and not a man 
threw a monkey-wrench into the machinery. They 
simply slowed up — and they won an eight-hour 
day and an increase in pay that made their wages 
average from seventy-five cents to two dollars 
and seventy-five cents per day for skilled 
mechanics. 

A slim little consumptive led this great strike — 
an almost pathetic figure who in more ways than 
one, resembles the simple, saint-like Gandhi of 
India. His name is Kagawa of Kobe. It takes 
wise and brave leaders to do this sort of thing 
— ^men as wise and brave as Kagawa. And it 
takes courageous workers to follow such leaders. 

That was the start of the great Kobe labor 
movement. Within a year after this "Go-Slow" 
strike most of these Kawasaki workmen were or- 
ganized in unions of one kind or another. 

But this was not true of the eleven thousand 
workers in the Mitsubishi Shipyards. Here the 
management had been able to root out all agi- 
tators and keep their plant "clean" of organizers 

104 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

— less than ten per cent, of the men being or^ 
ganized in June, 1921. As direct result of lack 
of a fighting organization, hours, wages and 
working conditions were much worse at these 
yards than at the Kawasaki. 

On June 28, 1921, the Kobe Federation of 
Labor held a meeting to see what could be done 
to establish firmly the position of labor in Kobe — 
to hold what had been gained and to plan for fu^ 
ture organizing. 

The following day the Electrical Department of 
the Kawasaki yards presented demands to the 
factory management, including recognition of the 
unions as negotiating bodies in wage or other 
disputes, a high allowance system in cases of dis- 
charge, and the establishment of a factory com- 
mittee system of work committees selected by the 
workmen. 

At about the same time the workers of a branch 
at the Mitsubishi presented demands for the right 
to organize unions, the recognition of such unions 
as negotiating bodies, an increase of wages, the 
introduction of an eight-hour day and a ** dis- 
charge allowance" system. 

After parleys lasting a week the sixteen com- 
mitteemen from the Electrical Department of the 
Kawasaki yards were dismissed with liberal ** dis- 
charge allowances" — but the sixteen refused to 
be fired. There were fights and riots at the yard- 
gates that resulted in a general decision of the 

105 



/ 
/ 

THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAS^ 

men to quit work. Much the same thing hap- 
pened at the Mitsubishi plant. 

On the following day, July 8th, the workers 
from both shipyards, to the number of some 
twenty-five thousand, paraded the principal 
streets of Kobe. The next day, Sunday, a second 
and even larger demonstration took place. The 
procession stretched for miles and miles, a great 
line of red flags, red union banners and white 
banners inscribed with strike slogans. 

The next day the workers reported to the plant 
in the Kawasaki yards but there was no work 
done. The company directors steadily refused to 
discuss matters with the workers owing, they 
claimed, to the absence of the president of the 
company in Europe. 

Things apparently were at a draw — when into 
the consciousness of the workers was planted the 
idea of taking over control of the shops. It was 
radical — ^it was pure Russian! And it proved 
that Japan's labor leaders were in close touch 
with the reddest red thought of Europe. 

A proclamation was passed out to all the work- 
ers that read as follows : 

''The Kawasaki Industrial Committee assumes 
control of the operations of the various work- 
shops from date. We, as representatives of over 
17,000 workers at the head and branch factories 
of the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Yard, presented to 
the management of the company demands con- 

106 



KAG AWA OF KOBE 

sisting of seven counts, including the introduc- 
tion of the factory committee system. To these 
demands Messrs. Nagatomo and Yamamoto, di- 
rectors of the company, refused to give a satisfac- 
tory answer, on tiie plea of the absence of the 
president. 

''We have never been prompted by a desire to 
put the industry of Japan in jeopardy. What we 
desire is that the company should recognize our 
personality and help in rendering our lives less 
difficult. If, however, we continue to strike as a 
counter-measure against the arrogant and insin- 
cere attitude which has been hitherto assumed by 
the company, it will only end in paralyzing the 
industry of Japan and in causing social unrest, 
and therefore we propose to do our work at our 
respective workshops, ourselves assuming con- 
trol of all operations, until our demands are ac- 
cepted. 

THE METHODS OF CONTROL 

**1. The Industrial Committee shall control 
all the business. 

*'2. All the clerks and other employees must 
attend to their respective duties as hitherto, 
under the direction of the Industrial Committee. 

"3. The company shall be made to pay wages 
to the workers at the same rates as hitherto. 

"4. The working hours shall be reduced from 
the present eight hours to six, but efforts will be 
made to do the same amount of work during this 
reduced working period. When, however, the 
Industrial Committee considers it expedient, this 
time will either be extended or further reduced. 

107 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

"5. Those who act in a manner disturbing the 
general peace of the various workshops and im- 
pairing the efficiency shall be referred to the 
Disciplinary Committee." 

For several days workers came to their benches 
as usual, but there was no work done for no de- 
tails of operation were formulated. Then on the 
morning of the fourteenth, a battalion of troops 
arrived and the works were closed and a ten-day 
lockout declared. Demonstrations were pro- 
hibited, but there were great gatherings under 
the guise of athletic meetings and later vast con- 
claves at religious shrines. 

While all this was being done by the Kawasaki 
workers, the laborers in the Mitsubishi yards were 
demonstrating and rioting, eventually suffering 
a lockout. For two weeks the strike went on and 
finally, July 29th, while visiting shrines en masse 
the paraders turned off from their regular line 
of march, moving toward the Kawasaki docks, 
where a bloody riot took place. One man was 
mortally wounded and forty or fifty others se- 
riously hurt. 

This affair was followed by wholesale arrests 
and some three hundred strike leaders were im- 
prisoned, including Kagawa, the real brains and 
inspiration of the whole movement. On August 
8th, after refusing all attempts at mediation the 
workers returned to the yards making no terms 
whatever with their employers. 

108 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

Their strike was lost, but they had gone far in 
awakened labor conseionsness. No longer were 
they centuries behind their factory brothers in 
European and Russian shops. They were in the 
vanguard of labor radicalism. And this in bu- 
reaucratic, imperialistic Japan — ancient Japan. 

"Some day I shall be assassinated," Kagawa 
told me, very quietly, and without fear. **In my 
slums here there are seven hundred gamblers, 
who belong to the ancient Gamblers ' Guild of Old 
Japan. Hounded and abused by the police in the 
past, the government has now organized these 
gamblers into a recognized fraternity, humor- 
ously called 'The Flower of the Nation,' with the 
sole purpose of using them to combat the fight 
for democracy. Working now with the police, 
they are used to choke down unrest and check the 
growing power of the millions. The Old Order is 
desperate in Japan to-day." 

It is desperate, too — this worn-out old order of 
militarism and medievalism. It is desperate and 
therefore dangerous. Against it are ranged all 
that are fair and liberal and intelligent. The best 
of the commercial interests of Japan are trying 
to check military ambition before it reaps the har- 
vest that was Germany's; and they are trying to 
solve the problems of industrial unrest before 
they break forth in some wild rush of Bolshevism. 

All Young Japan is helping these liberal ele- 
109 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

ments. The students of Japan are dreaming of a 
New Japan — ^liberal — advanced, clean. They are 
in harmony with the ideals of China's great stu- 
dent body. 

Japan is at the forks of the road. She must 
choose either a path that will lead to internal and 
external peace and happiness or one that will lead 
her to both wars and revolution. For generations 
the militarists with their great colonial ambitions 
have been at the wheel. They have brought Japan 
a certain success and a certain prosperity, but it 
has all been built on moving sands. The worms 
of unrest and dissatisfaction are eating at the 
wooden foundations. The millions of Common 
Japan are tired of their job. They want a good 
living and fair chance in the world and an equal 
voice in their own affairs. Universal suffrage 
may not come this year or the next, but the cries 
of the great majorities must sooner or later be 
heard. No longer will they consent to remain 
inarticulate — they learned to lisp in their rice 
riots and steel strikes and soon they will talk. 

They have proved that there is no wrath like 
the wrath of the patient man; for the Oriental, 
slow to anger and disciplined for centuries in 
obedience and respect and patience, knows no 
restraint when he finally does break loose. This 
fundamental psychological fact must be reckoned 
with in considering what revolution would mean 
to an eastern country like Japan. The old ideas 

110 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

of feudalism, carrying Avith them eastern obe- 
dience and loyalty and submission, are deeply 
rooted, but some sudden cyclone of hate or hunger 
or wild Bolshevism could tear them up in a night. 

The winds of Bolshevism that are blowing more 
or less over the world are only faint whispering 
breezes, but as the storm center comes eastward 
from the Urals they grow stronger and stronger. 

The millions and millions of Japan's submerged 
stand at one end of the social balance; at the 
other end stands the old and firmly entrenched 
royalty backed by a ruling military class and 
caste. Up to now they never squarely faced each 
other, but the time is surely coming when they 
will, and if there is no middle ground for them to 
meet on or no one from the center to show them 
the way, revolution must inevitably result. 

The best and finest men of Japan see this and 
they are desperately trying to meet the situation 
by taking the power away from the military and 
giving it bit by bit to the millions. These men 
are gaining every day in strength and confidence. 
They are fighting against tremendous odds be- 
cause neither side sympathizes with them ; and in 
fighting the military they are battling all the past 
traditions of Japan. 

There is little question but that democracy 
eventually will come. It takes a great faith in 
the spirit of the new world to sense its approach 
in this last bulwark of unfair, irresponsible autoc- 

111 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

racy — the emperor here does actually live behind 
stone walls and moats — but it will come and it 
will overturn the old military idea and the flar- 
ing new radicalism as well. Democracy will play 
no favorites here if it is given a chance, and it will 
stand neither for autocratic Russian Bolshevism 
nor autocratic Japanese militarism. 

Behind, and more important than the awaken- 
ing of the working masses of Japan and the very 
modest, conservative liberalism of a few officials, 
stands the real hope of this coming democracy — 
Japan's wonderful student body. It is these 
thousands of young men, in their student caps and 
blue capes, who are the real lamp-bearers of New 
Japan. They are not the petty minded, narrow 
gauged men that their fathers were, but rather 
broad visioned and liberal, who hold firmly the 
idea of leading their Japan peacefully to her 
real place in the New World. 

American college students, absorbed in athletics 
and junior proms, could take many useful lessons 
from these boys of Japan. Seventy-five per cent, 
of them are going out of their universities thrilled 
with the prospect of helping Japan solve fairly 
and decently these great social and international 
problems. Many of their professors are opening 
to them visions of self-sacrifice and public ser- 
vice, and giving them ideals that will help carry 
them through their battles with the Things That 
Are, 

112 



KAGAWA OF KOBE 

In one of the student clubs at the Imperial Uni- 
versity in Tokyo there is a single group of twenty- 
five young men who have pledged themselves to 
give their lives to the bringing of democracy to 
Japan. Five years ago they would have gone into 
the army or the navy, but now they are enlisting 
in the ranks of democracy to fight for what is 
right and fair and fine. There is an actual short- 
age of applicants to the military schools and 
scores of young officers are leaving the army and 
other scores are coming from service in Siberia 
with the knowledge that things are fundamentally 
wrong at home. 

The hope of peace in the Pacific rests with 
these same students and young liberals — and with 
the widening vision and broadened knowledge of 
thousands of the more progressive Japanese. 

One of the great things accomplished at the 
"Washington Conference was a removing of the 
colored spectacles of fear and distortion that large 
numbers of Japanese had been wearing. As long 
as the professional Japanese militarists could 
point to the growing menace of the American 
Navy he could hold through fear the upper hand 
in government affairs. But no longer is the 
American Navy a potential menace to the western 
Pacific — and so at present the shop-worn shib- 
boleths of the Japanese war party have lost their 
magic with the common millions. 

It will be a long battle in Japan — this fight to 
113 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

gain a liberal democracy. But it is coming, just 
as the other great liberal movements of the world 
that have to do mth man's emancipation and 
political liberty, are coming. 

Kagawa of Kobe will pass on, but there will be 
other young and brave leaders to snatch up the 
torch and carry it forward. And some day this 
torch of New Nippon will help light the world. 



CHAPTER V 

STRUGGLING KOREA 

Korea, like India and the Philippines, is 
another example of the world tides of unrest 
bringing to strange shores a determination for 
nationalism. 

By chance it is expressed here not against white 
conquerors but against yellow conquerors — con- 
querors worshipping the same gods and writing 
the same language and living under the same cul- 
ture and civilization. But it is the same great 
battle — ^the same revolt — and the same awaken- 
ing. 

Four years of fighting and suffering for inde- 
pendence have made a new people of the Koreans. 
They are nothing short of a transformed race, 
finally awakened from the lethargy that has 
chained them for countless generations. 

There are few stories in the world more 
dramatic and thrilling than this story of the re- 
birth of Korea. It is the actual coming to life of 
a nation that had died and passed on. 

Korea was gone forever, and even her warmest 
friends and sympathizers had not one ray of hope 
for her. She was not only crushed to death under 

115 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

an iron heel but the spark that makes nations rise 
up, apparently had been put out forever. Other 
nations that have been reborn, like Poland, Fin- 
land, Czecho-Slovakia, were physically crushed 
but the fire of revolt and the secret love of coun- 
try still burned brightly. Four years ago no one 
dreamed that there were more than smoldering 
embers of nationalism still alive in Korea. 

Modern Korea had always been misruled. The 
court had degenerated into a fat, flabby, weak 
affair that permitted great power to the gov- 
ernors of the provinces and the local magistrates 
and farmed out the all important task of collect- 
ing the taxes. Graft was everywhere and the 
eternal system of ''squeezing," which has worked 
such harm to China, was rampant. The country 
had no backbone, no morale, no spiritual reserve 
of any kind. The people were poor and kept poor. 
The army had countless generals but few sol- 
diers; the navy had eighteen admirals but no 
ships. 

In 1592 Japan had invaded Korea and for eight 
years had raided and ravaged the country. 
Korea never recovered from the beating she 
received — nor did she ever cease to hate Japan. 
Since then she has been merely the country that 
has been fought over and fought for. Until a 
generation ago she was the Hermit Kingdom that 
had closed her doors to progress and civilization. 
When they were forced open she faced an ambi- 

116 



STRUGGLING KOREA 

tious world with weak faith, weaker spirit, and 
absolute lack of preparation. 

With victory in the China-Japanese War and 
the Russian-Japanese War it was inevitable that 
Japan should take Korea as the final spoils. No 
one any longer bothers to grow violent over the 
way Japan broke her pledges to respect the 
sovereignty of Korea — ^it's an established fact and 
one of a rather long series that has made Japan's 
pledged word carry little weight in the East. 

August 29, 1910, Japan formally annexed 
Korea. Previous to this she had forced the abdi- 
cation of the old emperor in favor of a weak and 
spineless son. In 1908 she had declared her pro- 
tectorate over Korea, and two years later she had 
actually and completely taken her into the fold. 

Japan had her full and fair chance then. 
Unlike these days of her ambitions in Manchuria 
and Siberia no one had any objection to her ac- 
tions. With absolutely no opposition from the 
outside, and none worthy of mention from the 
inside, she took over a country and its seventeen 
million people. For a long time they had been 
an unhappy and a dissatisfied people. Their 
rulers had abused them and misruled them and 
kept them in ignorance and poverty. What they 
wanted most was a little more rice and better 
homes and a little less ''squeezing" and a few 
schools for their children. 

Had Japan had the vision and the real interest 
117 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

in Korea she could easily have given all these 
things and more — and won Korea both for the 
Koreans and the Japanese. But she dreamed of 
Korea only for the Japanese. 

She started out immediately to carry this 
through. She backed a government-planned de- 
veloping company that dreamed of colonizing 
Korea with hundreds of thousands of Japanese 
farmers. This company, organized in 1908, had 
forced the old Korean Government to take out 
three million dollars in stock and pay for it in 
government lands. It was a fair start for a young 
concern. To-day it owns one twenty-sixth of all 
the rice lands in Korea and thousands of acres of 
other land. The country is full of tales about its 
petty discriminations against Koreans; I can not 
vouch for the truth of these, but I do know the 
Korean farmers distrust and hate the company. 

This was only one of a score of mistakes that 
Japan made when she had everything in her 
favor. She planted down a police and gendarme 
system that was both cruel and unnecessary. She 
honeycombed the country with spies and put in 
thousands of soldiers. She filled the cities and 
towns mth Japanese shop-keepers and small busi- 
ness men. She interfered with old religious cus- 
toms. She crushed the Korean press and made 
free speech and free press bywords. And worst 
of all, she attempted to stop the use of the Korean 
language in the government schools. 

118 



STRUGGLING KOREA 

For nine weary years the Koreans patiently 
bent their backs and bowed their heads. For cen- 
turies they had been accustomed to abuse from 
overlords — but finally the worm turned. 

In February, 1919, the old emperor's younger 
son, who had been taken as a boy to Japan and 
kept under the influence of the Japanese court, 
was to marry into the Japanese royal family. 
Three days before the wedding was to take place 
the old emperor suddenly died under circum- 
stances that led the Korean people to believe that 
he had committed suicide so that the marriage 
would not take place — by an old Korean custom 
there could be no wedding in the royal family for 
three years after a death. This costly protest of 
the old emperor to the union of his son with a 
Japanese acted as a spark to all the piled-up 
hatred and resentment of his people. Among cer- 
tain of the educated Koreans there had long been 
dreams of revolution and now there came a de- 
termination to set it in action. 

The date for the funeral of the old emperor 
was set for March 3rd. The Japanese police ex- 
pected trouble, but they were taken unawares 
when on Sunday afternoon, two days before the 
funeral, thousands of students and young people 
ran through the streets of Seoul shouting: 
''Mansai! Mansai!" There was no violence of 
any kind on the part of the paraders, but their 
cries for independence brought police riot calls 

119 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

and they were clubbed and mauled about and 
some hundreds thrown into jail. 

Over all Korea the movement spread like a for- 
est fire. Everywhere there were parades and 
demonstrations — ^with the police using their 
swords and finally their rifles. According to the 
government figure there were from March 1st to 
July 2nd, 28,934 arrested. Of this number 9,078 
were flogged. The police reports show 631 were 
killed, but Koreans say the actual number was 
several times larger. Thousands of those 
arrested were tortured in ways that even the mas- 
ter torturers of the days of the Inquisition could 
have learned from. 

The violence with which the Japanese police 
and officials struck back shocked the world; and 
Japan, sensitive to criticism, ordered a change 
in the governing officials. Baron Siato was sent 
as governor-general and immediately reforms 
were promised — the abolishing of the custom of 
flogging; the establishment of free press and free 
speech; the teaching of Korean in certain of the 
schools ; more religious freedom and the reestab- 
lishment of certain old customs ; and a less vigor- 
ous police system. All these were promised and 
highly advertised, but Koreans say that many of 
them have been just promises and that the petty 
under-officials and police are but little more 
humane or considerate now than they were two 
years ago. 

120 



STRUGGLING KOREA 

After all you can almost waste a little pity on 
Japan even at the same moment that you are 
swept into a storm of anger at the stupidity and 
cruelty of her record in this heart-broken penin- 
sula — ^foecause Japan's position is an impossible 
one. It is a situation that has no answer and 
offers no solution for Japan except the giving 
of full independence to a people who are by no 
means ready for it — and she has no more inten- 
tion of doing this than she has of splitting up her 
own island empire. By immediate and dramatic 
reforms and generous gifts of semi-independence 
she might sidetrack this Korean independence 
revolution, but one is wasting time even to think 
about this because present-day Japan does not 
talk this language of democracy and international 
justice and fair play. 

Japan's promised reforms are not even keep- 
ing pace with the growth of the revolutionary 
movement. Instead of checking it with generous 
actions she isn't even keeping up with it. This 
determination to be free from Japan is sinking 
itself deeper and deeper into the hearts of all of 
the seventeen million of Korea's people. Every 
day the solution is becoming more difficult and 
impossible. The best that Japan can hope for is a 
temporary victory such as the English have had 
in India and Egypt. 

All in all Japan has made a pitiful mess of it. 
She faces to-day a race of people who apparently 

121 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

are in the revolutionary business for keeps. She 
has changed front, softened her old policy of mili- 
tary colonization, with her banks and railroads 
and traders and land-grabbers all mixed up 
together — but it's been too late. She has discov- 
ered that you can't hammer the swords into wel- 
come plowshares after once the sword has been 
stained with blood. 

New demands for independence and fresh 
demonstrations against Japanese rule will in all 
probability be made. They may continue peace- 
ful demonstrations of parades and shouts for 
Korean independence, but they will probably be 
put down with force — because it is impossible for 
the Japanese military mind to understand any 
other power but that of force. And the more 
force used the deeper sinks the determination for 
freedom. 

In every way it is a hopeless and thankless job 
that Japan has on her hands. Korea has felt the 
magic winds of self-determination that have been 
blowing over the world. The same spirit that has 
swept through Poland, Finland, Czecho- Slovakia, 
Ireland, Egypt, India and even touched our own 
smiling Philippines has set fire to men's hearts 
here. 

But it was far more than any call for national 
freedom that sent men and women down the 
streets of Korean cities crying "Mansai'^ — ^liter- 
ally translated "ten thousands years" but mean- 

122 



STRUGGLING KOREA 

ing liberty forever. It was far more than the sud- 
den setting off of all the piled-up hate and cruelty 
and petty interference and injustices of Japanese 
domination that had been practised during the 
ten years of Japanese annexation. Deep down 
the whole great movement was almost as much 
a demonstration and protest against economic 
injustices as against political injustices. As far 
as the uneducated Korean peasant and the poor 
coolies were concerned the revolution had little 
of the glorious thrill of men fighting for their 
freedom; it was a protest against the harshness 
of landlords, and the pettiness and stupidity and 
overbearing attitude of the gendarmes and sol- 
diers and civil administrators. 

Yet it is only fair to write that Japan has done 
some fine things in Korea. She has built roads — 
although they are mostly military roads ; she has 
opened great banks; she has established schools 
— although she insisted for years that only the 
Japanese language be taught. She has done these 
and countless other things that have helped 
Korea, but she has done them all for Japan and 
not for Korea. And with this spirit dominating 
her she failed in her dream of assimilating the 
Koreans. She failed to give them any reason for 
wanting to become Nipponized. She tried with 
bayonets to make people love her. 

Can she still come back? Can she not only 
checkmate this revolutionary movement but sat- 

123 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

isfy it and win the revolting Koreans? Is the 
independence movement so deep and wide-spread 
that nothing can more than temporarily check 
it? 

I went among Koreans of all classes trying to 
find the answer. I found ahmidant proof that 
there was little spirit of compromise in the Ko- 
rean people; that they are really back of their 
revolution and will never be permanently satis- 
fied with anything short of full independence. 

I recall now the story of a primary schoolboy 
sitting up in his bed at night and in his sleep 
shouting: ^'Mansai! Mansai!" His little heart 
was so full of this fight for independence that he 
dreamed of it and cried its magic words in his 
sleep. 

An eight-year-old girl coming home from school 
one afternoon drew the forbidden Korean flag 
on the pavement with a bit of chalk. Three or 
four Korean elders cautioned her that if the 
police saw her they might arrest her and punish 
her. 

"I would not care," she answered, "I am 
doing this for independence. " 

So it goes everywhere over his reborn land. A 
fifteen-year-old factory boy with whom I talked 
one day on the outskirts of Seoul proved again to 
me what magic the dreams of freedom can work. 

''Were you in the demonstrations and did you 
shout Mansaif I asked. 

124 



STRUGGLING KOREA 

"Of course," he answered. 

''And are you going to take part in more 
demonstrations ? ' ' 

''Of course." 

' ' But you might be arrested and beaten, ' ' I sug- 
gested. 

"What does that matter?" he answered simply, 

"But you might even be killed. You are young 
and you have many things to live for. You might 
be killed." 

"Indeed I would truly live forever then," he 
answered. "I would be a Korean hero and men 
would honor me forever. ' ' 

Pride in revolution! Dreams of a hero's 
death! Boys growing up singing the eternal 
songs of independence ! 

So again let it be written that the fire of revo- 
lution burns in the heart of every Korean. In 
some It still is only a dull glow, but in others it is 
a flaming spirit that can never be put out. 

The hate of the Korean people for the Japanese 
is only equaled by the hate of the Siberian com- 
mon people for the Japanese. When I saw how 
intense this was in Siberia I thought I had never 
seen anything so bitter and deep — but that was 
before I had seen how these simple people of the 
once Hermit Kingdom despise and distrust and 
hate these men from Nippon. 

Hate is a strange tonic to give strength to a 
broken people, but it has worked miracles with 

125 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

the Koreans. For this hate of Japan, with the 
love for Korea, has given new life and fresh 
hopes to a cause that seemed lost forever. 

Japan faces the impossible because there can 
be no lasting answer to the call for independence 
— except independence. 



CHAPTER VI 

IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

To TELL of the unrest and revolt of the East 
without including the dramatic recital of the 
unrest of great Siberia would be to tell but half 
a story. 

Yet this particular tale of Siberia that I have 
to chronicle isn't about Bolshevism or Bolsheviks 
— ^it's about a plain, simple farmer boy. 

His fighting comrades called him "The Jap 
Killer," and he had a record that warranted the 
name. He was only a kid, a fourteen-year-old 
kid, who should have been in school — had there 
been any school for him. For days I'd heard 
tales of this firebrand of a boy who had sworn 
to die fighting the Japanese. Finally I reached 
the Partizan detachment he had joined and his 
comrades in arms brought him around to me. 

The men soldiers left the room when he came 
in; only the boy and the interpreter and myself 
remained. 

**Tell me just what has happened," I asked him 
directly. 

He answered in a tired little voice, that now 
and then showed a soggy brutal determination. It 

127 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

was a story grown old, but its very repetition 
was like a vow resworn. There was something 
almost religious about it. 

**It was last summer and I'd gone into the hills 
for wood, when the Japs came into my village," 
he began. ''Some one had told them that my 
father had given food to Partizan troops, and 
let them sleep in our house — so they killed him. 
Then they killed mj mother and brother and sis- 
ter and baby brother, and burned the house. 
When I got back from the hills with my load of 
wood I found out all that. I started out for 
revenge. I've killed ten Japs already and I'^ll 
keep on until the last Jap in Siberia is either 
killed or driven out." 

''But you may be killed yourself," I suggested. 

"Nitchevo!" — ^it doesn't matter — "they killed 
my father : he was a better man than I am. I hate 
them. I shall keep on fighting imtil either I 
or the last makaka in Siberia is killed." 

He was fourteen — an ordinary Siberian boy. 
He was unafraid to die. His was the heart and 
flaming spirit of this great new Siberia. 

For six years he and his older brothers and his 
father had been fighting wars and revolutions, 
and now he faces another conflict. On a shaggy 
Siberian pony with an nondescript rifle and a 
bandoleer of cartridges he fights for his home 
and his land and his future liberties ; he fights the 
brown man of Japan for a dozen kings ' ransoms. 

128 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

Take a bleak forest, with a starving pack of 
gray wolves and three feet of snow and a dashing 
troika Vvdth a man and his bride and his last car- 
tridge, and mix with long lines of ball-and-chain 
exiles being driven into the hungry mouths of 
cruel mines, and w^hat's the result — a composite 
picture of the Average Person's idea of Siberia. 

Take a country roughly four thousand miles 
long and a thousand or two deep, with millions 
upon millions of smiling acres, the most valuable 
gold mines in the world and more miles of navi- 
gable rivers than even America has, and mix with 
virgin forests yet untracked, and coal and ore and 
platinum and precious mines, and what's the re- 
sult — a composite picture of the Siberia of reality. 

''The last great frontier of the white man," 
some one had called this land of undreamed miles 
and uncalculated wealth. And it is a land for 
white men, a half -world that will help to conquer 
the rest of the world. If there ever v^as a coun- 
try worth fighting for it is this Siberia that we 
are talking about. That's what the little men of 
Japan think. And that's what a determined 
handful of white men, fighting a long fight, bat- 
tling for almost a lost cause in their frozen hills 
of Eastern Siberia, think. 

Plain drama it is — big tremendous drama, 
where races and color and religions and cultures 
clash and fight ; where the man on horseback bat- 
tles the hordes from the rice paddies. And this 

129 



THE EISINa TEMPER OF, THE EAST 

lone white man is worth telling about, because 
few understand him, and while he fights for all 
his race and color no one of his own kind gives 
him a hand or a word. 

Let's consider for one moment the situation as 
it is in Eastern Siberia in the early days of 1922. 
The Japanese Army scattered along the railroads 
and rivers of the Siberian coast line, dominates 
local governments and bullies through its own 
ends. It dreams of gaining by hook or crook the 
priceless mines and petroleum deposits of the 
northern half of Saghalien; of controlling the 
great ore deposits of the Pre-Amur Province, 
These two alone would give to Japan the material 
for forging the weapons for future wars. The 
World War taught Japan no moral lesson, but it 
did teach her that a nation which failed to con- 
trol the essentials of war materials — coal and 
iron — would lose a modem war. 

Military Japan must have these. To gain na- 
tional wealth she would grab the priceless gold 
mines and the fishing rights and the economic 
advantages that the control of the railroads of 
Eastern Siberia would give her. With this wealth 
and these raw materials in twenty years she 
would not hesitate to force any issue with the 
Western World. 

Japan is a master at creating situations. By 
leaving a small battalion of Japanese troops in 
the frozen city of Nickolayevsk she invited the 
fighting that last year resulted in practically th« 

130 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

annihilation of her nationals there. She called it 
"the Nickolayevsk massacre," and with it as a 
match she attempted through pure governmental 
propaganda to light the fire of false patriotism in 
her people at home — ^most of whom have always 
been opposed to the whole Siberian adventure — 
and gain popular consent to a brutal Siberian 
military campaign. 

When Japan moves she advances in three col- 
umns — her army, her official propaganda agents 
and her commercial interests. While her official 
propaganda feeds the world on tales of red terror 
in Siberia, her armies kill the game that her com- 
mercial interests later gobble up. Assisting in 
the complete breakdown and demoralization of 
Eastern Siberia by playing one side against the 
other, Japan has secured not only great timber, 
mining and fishery concessions, but her protected 
nationals have purchased for a song valuable 
mining properties from impoverished and fright- 
ened Siberians. 

She demands and will continue to demand that 
all these concessions granted by various Cossack 
chiefs and these properties bought even after they 
had been confiscated, shall be recognized and pro- 
tected by any future Siberian Government. How 
much further and deeper her demands will go no 
one knows : the Siberian Provisional Government 
leaders quote the French proverb that, "appetite 
grows mth eating." 

Some say she will attempt to keep the northern 
131 



THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 

half of Saghalien and at least dominate the won- 
derful port of Vladivostok. This city whose 
name freely translated means, "The Ruler of the 
East,'* is just that. It controls the Pacific end 
of the great Trans-Siberian railroad and with it 
the thousand-mile Chinese Eastern railroad that 
economically dominates the northern part of Man- 
churia: it is the genuine Ruler of the East. 

It is a district and a future that fills every 
dream demand of Japan. It is a country worth 
a half million men — to Japan. It is a land that 
would make Japan a nation to be more than 
reckoned with by the whole world. 

And a few thousand white men fight to drive 
back these invaders. Their cities on the coast 
fly the flag of the Rising Sun: they have only 
their hills and ponies and their rifles — and their 
determination. For seven years they've been 
fighting wars and revolution. And yet they are 
still battling. 

This drama of Siberia had thrilled me — but I 
wanted to get behind the scenes and touch hands 
with these tragic actors. I wanted to feel the 
heart beat of these brave common people who 
dared to fight a nation, backed by the world. So 
with an interpreter and a Partizan spy guide I 
faded out of the Japanese picture in Vladivostok. 
A day's journey by train and then a twenty-mile 
sled ride and we were beyond the Japanese lines 
and in the deep snow-blanketed hills. 

132 



IVAN THE JAP KILLEE 

It was almost dusk when we rounded the brow 
of a hill and looked down on the log cabin of a 
half-dozen woodchoppers, nestling in the valley 
below. Apparently the road was watched, for in 
less than a minute after we had come into view, 
two men left the house, mounted horses and gal- 
loped off down the valley. When we had trudged 
through the quarter-mile of snow and reached the 
house there was no one there but the wood- 
choppers. 

I wanted to go back into the hill villages, I told 
them through my interpreter. I was an American 
and I wanted to see just what these Siberian 
farmer folk were, and why they were so bitter 
against the Japanese. They told me they would 
bring one of the Partizan chiefs, and let him talk 
to me. In five minutes they had saddled one of 
their work horses and trotted off toward the near- 
est village held by these anti-Japanese, anti- 
Cossack, peasant soldiers — called Partizans in 
Siberia. 

We waited, and while we rested we drank tea. 
That's Russia — waiting and drinking tea. Some 
day when Russia gets tired of waving a red flag 
and wants another she should design a samovar 
rampant on a snowy white background. 

In about an hour four Partizan soldiers gal- 
loped up to the house and flinging themselves 
from their ponies in best revolutionary style, 
pushed open the low wooden door and entered. 

133 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

"We shook hands all the way around, and then 
sat down at the candle-lit table to discuss affairs. 
It was all full of color and warmth and drama: 
this low-ceilinged house of woodsmen, with two- 
thirds of the space taken with rough, straw cov- 
ered boards resting on wooden supports, where 
the men slept: the group at the table — the tall 
dashing leader, a mere boy vdth. a blond curl dip- 
ping low over his forehead ; the pock-marked sec- 
ond in command, a short stubby figure in his white 
sheepskin jacket with the fur turned out; and 
behind in the shadow of the single candle the final 
fringe of the ignorant gentle woodcutters. The 
pock-marked man spoke strange words of Inter- 
nationalism, Communism and Karl Marx and for 
the tenth of a second you could catch the glimmer 
of superior patience flash over the faces of these 
men of the woods who were determined to cut the 
way to their own freedom. They, too, were tired 
of words and magic phrases — they wanted some 
of the good things of the world. 

I was to go into the hills and I would be wel- 
comed. I could stay as long as I wanted to, and 
they would pledge their lives that I would not fall 
into the hands of any Japanese troops. We drank 
another gallon of tea to the arrangement and for 
an hour sat around talking of wars and peace and 
more wars. My interpreter explained to th©m 
that I had been in Archangel and Moscow th« 
year before, and they plied me with questions 

134 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

about conditions there. The stubby, pock-marked 
man, I discovered, was from the outside world: 
all the others were Siberians who knew only of 
their home provinces. 

At eight one of the woodcutters announced that 
the horses were ready, so we bundled into our 
fur coats, and climbed in the peasant sled. Two 
of the mounted men rode ahead and the remaining 
two brought up behind. There was no moon, but 
the stars were brilliant. It must have been thirty 
degrees below zero, and now and then we would 
crawl off the low sled and walk for half a mile 
or so ; even heavy overshoes could not keep one 's 
feet from freezing in such temperature. 

After some two hours we passed a great ghost 
of a building, lying roofless and with broken win- 
dows, like the gigantic skull of some brick and 
mortar skeleton. One of the Partizans galloped 
alongside the sled and explained that the building 
was the ruins of the once famous Piankoff's 
vodka distillery, that had been burned down 
months before, by the peasants of the district. In 
the fall of 1914, following the czar's temperance 
edict, it had been closed down, and it had re- 
mained shut during the Kerensky regime, and 
during the short period that followed when the 
Soviets held forth in Siberia. But with the com- 
ing of Kolchak it had reopened and Japanese sol- 
diers had been sent out to guard it. But the 
peasants wanted none of the vodka and none of 

135 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

the Japanese so one warm June night they or- 
ganized, and sweeping down from the hills, 
destroyed it. Alcohol, I have found, has come 
for good and all into Russia. The peasants over 
the great spread of Russia are finished with 
vodka: Soviet Russia has always prohibited the 
manufacture and sale of high proof spirits, and 
it was only in the districts held by the ''Whites" 
that vodka was permitted to be sold. 

Even before I had touched hands with them, 
this ruined distillery taught me a good deal about 
my Siberian folk. It had been built here so that 
it could get without high freightage charges the 
grain these small farmers grew, and so it offered 
them a good market and high prices for their 
produce. But they had burned it down because 
first of all they did not want their sons to have the 
vodka, and they could not stand to see the hated 
makakas — Japanese — strutting about their hills. 

It was almost midnight when we reached the 
little village with its row of low one-storied 
houses, built along the single wide street. A 
frozen creek touched its borders here and there 
like some silver ribbon flung carelessly down the 
narrow valley by a giant's hand. Inside the house 
of Dubrovin we found a score of peasant soldier 
boys lolling about the great Dutch oven in the 
kitchen, humming to the music of a guitar. They 
were billeted here, and of the three rooms in the 
house they had mllingly been given two. The 

136 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

bearded peasant owner, and his kindly hospitable 
wife, with their four children, wanted only one 
room. These fighting boys were their own fight- 
ing boys, whose battles were their battles, and 
whose victories were their victories. It was one 
great family, and a willing family. They took 
their scanty meals from the same mother pot, and 
they drank their tea from the same samovar. 

'•See the boy there in the corner — ^he is my 
son," the gentle old peasant housewife proudly 
said to me, as she nodded slyly to a great raw- 
boned country lad, with a carbine strapped over 
his shoulder. Then she went on with all the pride 
there was in her heart: "He's fighting the 
Japanese for me. ' ' 

And I found it the same everywhere among 
these frozen hills. This army of Partizan soldiers 
was a peasant army, and these old mothers and 
fathers were real mothers and fathers, and these 
fighting sons were real sons — their sons and the 
sons of the peasants of the next hill village. 

Ideals taught by candle-light, it seemed to me, 
were the essence of these Siberian farmer folk; 
ideals that meant something because they had to 
be fought for and sacrificed for and paid for. 
There are other ideals besides candle-lit ideals, 
but men do not give their lives so freely for elec- 
tric lighted ideals, nor do they bum so brightly 
as those of the pine knots and the tallow dips. 
Civilizations and super-progress does take some- 

137 



THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 

thing out of men's hearts — it takes the fire and 
the dare and the punch. Life does become too 
precious the moment that it's worth more than 
its ideals are worth. 

A sixteen-year-old peasant boy named Audrey 
proved all this that following morning. In his 
farm sled he drove us up and down the hills, 
through two tiny hamlets to the village of 
Rakovka, and while he urged his lazy ponies into 
a trot he would answer our questions in a low 
soft voice, looking squarely at us out of eyes that 
were! used to gazing on hills and valleys and 
honest things. There was no guile in his heart, 
and no deceit on his lips. 

* 'What is it that you Siberians want T ' I asked 
him through my interpreter. 

*'We want the Japanese to leave our country," 
he answered, turning from his horses. 

''What else?" 

"Svohoda." (Freedom.) 

"What's that?" 

"Land and some other things." 

"Do you want them bad enough to die for 
them?" I questioned. 

"Of course," he answered very simply. 

"But you are young, and there are many fine 
things ahead that you would miss. Surely you 
wouldn't give your life for svohoda." 

"Oh, yes — because I would be dying for my 
ideal," he answered. 

138 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

I persisted in my searching for the real heart 
of this boy. "Do you mean to tell me that if by 
going to the crest of that hill you could drive out 
the Japanese and get your precious svoboda, but 
that you'd be killed, that you would do it?" 

*'0f course, because I would be dying for my 
ideal." 

I wanted to reach out and put my arms about 
this sixteen-year-old boy who would have been 
happy to die for his ideal. He'd never seen an 
American before, he told me, and he didn't know 
just where America was, but his was the heart of 
the best of America : his was the fighting soul of 
the boys of America of other generations when 
there was American svoboda to be fought for. 
And his was the great heart of these Siberian 
folk. 

"Who told you about these wonderful ideals?" 
I asked him. 

"My father," he answered. 

Candle-lit ideals, I thought — simple courageous 
ideals of real patriots. 

He sat silent for a long time and then he turned 
from his horses. "We will all die fighting Japan. 
We hate the makakas. But we Ve nothing against 
America. We'll fight to drive out the Japanese, 
but if America took Siberia we wouldn't care 
very much. We know America is a free country, 
and that she would give us the land and freedom. 
But we'll all die fighting the makakas.*' 

139 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

I knew that in the heart of this simple, un- 
spoiled peasant boy, echoing his father's words 
about ideals, that I had found the real pulsing, 
breathing heart of Russia's one hundred and 
fifty million peasants. No one who hasn't seen 
the tears in their eyes can know what dreams they 
have of education and what hopes of freedom, 
and what thoughts of having just a little of the 
good things of the world, and how they want the 
Japanese troops to go and let them settle their 
own affairs their own way. These people and 
their dreams are still to be discovered by the 
world, yet they are Russia — the real Russia of 
the future. They are the eighty-five per cent, of 
the millions of this great republic. 

This night at the village of Rakovka a dozen of 
the peasants came over to the house to see me. 
They drifted into the tiny double-windowed room, 
one at a time, and stood silent on the edge of the 
circle looking at me. None of them had ever seen 
a foreigner before and at first they couldn't un- 
derstand why I was there. The next morning the 
dashing chief of the detachment, who lived with 
his widowed mother in this same village, said to 
me: **When the peasants first saw you last night 
they resented your being in their hill village, but 
after they saw how you only wanted to find the 
truth they wept." 

That was a wonderful night: the half hun- 
dred soldiers crowded about the pine table where 

140 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

we ate supper from the single great dish; and 
on the fringe of the crowd the bearded old peas- 
ants sucking in the words like hungry men starv- 
ing for new hopes of freedom. There was a story 
in every soldier there, and a novel in every leader 
at the table. Neither time nor adventure will 
ever make me forget the bearded old Cossack 
from Orenburg, in South Russia, who was moth- 
ering and fathering all these farmer-soldier boys. 
His wrist had been broken by a Japanese rifle 
bullet, and his left hand was useless, and when 
he told me of his wife and four children at 
the other end of Russia his eyes were warm with 
tears. At home he was a school-teacher, and a 
member of the Cossack Council, and had been sen- 
tenced to life imprisonment in Siberia because, 
at the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, 
when Ataman Dutoff had asked the Cossack 
Council for authority to hang a Cossack colonel 
who had refused to fight the Bolshevik, this old 
fellow had said aloud in meeting: **Try hanging 
yourself first, Ataman Dutoff, and if it does 
you any good then hang your colonel." 

Nor will I ever forget the Dreamer who had 
been a revolutionist from boyhood. In the 1905 
revolution he had been sentenced for life in the 
Siberian mines and had served until the Keren- 
sky revolution had released him. He was no 
Communist — only a revolutionist, and now a 
patriot fighting brown men who would take his 

141 



THE RISING TEMPEE OF THE EAST 

country. Excepting these two from the outside 
world all were native Siberian peasant fighters. 
Even their chief, Stepanenko, had never been si. 
hundred miles from his hills. 

He was a figure after your own heart, this 
Stepanenko. A great black beard covered his 
face, and he looked tired and worn and old, but 
he confessed that he was only twenty-six. He 
was going to take us to stay at what was left of 
his house after the Japs had finished with it, but 
at the last moment he decided differently: "My 
mother always cries so when she sees me when 
I get home," he explained simply: **she is so 
afraid that something will happen." 

I had never in my life seen such love for men 
as these peasants of his bore for him. A dozen 
of them whispered to me that they would give 
their lives gladly for him. And I know that he 
would give his life just as freely for them. 

**"We shall lay down our rifles and go to farm- 
ing again as soon as the Japanese are driven out 
and we get our liberty and the land," he ex- 
plained. ''We are only peasants, fighting for 
what we believe to be right. We were willing to 
support the Omsk directory when it promised us 
democratic government. But it did not give us 
democracy. It gave us instead Kolchak and the 
Japanese: and Kolchak conscripted us and took 
our horses and food and gave us no freedom. So 
we fought and defeated him, and we will fight 

142 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

always for the things we believe in. We will fight 
the Japanese until the last man of us is killed." 

Over and over again I heard the same thought 
that night until I grew convinced that in nowise 
were these men radical men, but merely straight 
farmers fighting for what they believed to be 
right and just. For hours on end they asked me 
questions about America and Japan and then in 
turn they answered mine. One by one the tired 
soldiers and old peasants drifted away, until at 
midnight only the dozen men billeted in the house 
remained. Slowly they began spreading their 
sheepskin coats on the floor, pulling off their 
boots, unstrapping their pistols and soon we were 
all stretched out on the uncarpeted planks. The 
old Cossack blew out the candle, and then, in the 
darkness, the Dreamer, who 'd spent fifteen years 
of his life in Siberian prisons, began humming a 
revolutionary song. In a minute the others were 
nibbling at it, and soon the dozen men had thrown 
their hearts into the singing. I couldn't under- 
stand the words of the song, but the low, plain- 
tive, thrilling music swept into my heart, and I 
was glad that there was no light to show the tears 
in my eyes. 

I awoke in the morning \vith the sun streaming 
in through the double windows. My bunkies 
were pulling on their boots, and strapping on 
their pistols. I pulled on my own shoes and took 
my turn at splashing myself with cold water in 

143 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

the kitchen. Ten minutes later we sat down with 
the chief and the Dreamer and the old Cossack 
to a breakfast of tea and black bread and country 
sausage. We ate true Eussian peasant style, with 
wooden spoons from the same dish. 

At eleven a delegation of peasants arrived with 
an invitation for me to attend their Sunday morn- 
ing village assembly, so we started off with them. 
We walked a quarter of a mile down the broad 
single street and then entered one of the small 
one-story houses. The room was packed with 
bearded old peasants. They asked that all the 
soldiers leave, so that we would be alone with 
them. The Partizans smilingly withdrew, and, 
seated at a table, we faced these men to whom 
this fight against Japan and this whole revolu- 
tion were things as sacred and holy as their reli- 
gion. Only a few of them could read and write 
and none of them had ever seen an American 
before. 

''Just what is it that you Siberians want?" I 
asked very directly. 

*'We want the Japanese to get out and leave 
us alone," one of their spokesmen answered. 

"And what else do you want?" 

"Land and freedom," a half-dozen answered. 

It was the old cry — ''Zemla e svohoda" — that 
had echoed for a century from one end of great 
Russia to the other. 

"And will the Soviets give it to you?" 
144 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

**Yes — and if they do not, we will figlit on until 
we get it," one old man answered and the others 
nodded their heads. 

For the moment Soviet was a magic word for 
them and in it they saw their dreams of land and 
freedom. Bnt there had been other magic words 
too, and some of them had lost their charm, but 
"Land and Freedom," never. If Soviet failed 
they would fight on and on and on. They wanted 
the land for themselves — all of it — and nothing on 
this earth was strong enough to keep them from 
having it. 

It is difficult for America to grasp this land 
problem here in Russia and to realize how deep 
it has sunk itself into the hearts of the great 
Russian majorities. Before 1861 practically all 
the land was owned by the court, the church and 
the great landlords, and it was worked by serfs 
who were part of the estates. For the most part 
the work was done on the share basis and the serf 
attached to the land looked upon it as his, just as 
he thought that he belonged to it. In 1861 when 
he was freed the village in which he lived was 
permitted to buy part of the great estates and 
farm the land on the communal system. This 
meant that the land was divided among the fam- 
ilies according to number and at the end of from 
five to ten years redivided. The village paid for 
the land by yearly instalments, but so small was 
the plot allotted to each family that the peasant 

145 



THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 

was in many cases worse off than he had been be- 
fore. 

This was especially true of the peasants who 
remained on the great estates as hired hands. 
They had only their eternal ceaseless dream of 
land. In 1905 this dream was lit by the fire of 
revolt and terrible revolution followed. The 
world thinks of the 1905 revolution as a city revo- 
lution, but it was really a peasant revolution. 
Peasants burned the houses of the great estates, 
MUed hundreds of landlords, and in turn hun- 
dreds of thousands of them were killed. But it 
was like killing sheep; these peasants could only 
fight with scythes against professional hired sol- 
diers with machine-guns. 

Things were different in the next revolution, 
1917. After the army debacle of July, 1917, the 
farmer-boy soldiers took their rifles and machine- 
guns and went home. Many of them killed their 
landlords and burned the great houses and 
divided up the estates. The stabler, more intel- 
ligent peasants, took the advice of their Social 
Revolutionist political leaders, who told them to 
wait until the Constitutional Assembly could 
decide how the land was to be taken over by them 
and distributed. But Lenine dissolved the Con- 
stituent Assembly and declared for peace, and 
gave the poorer peasants permission to take over 
the estates themselves. Yet peace did not come 
and Lenine clamped down his commissars, orders, 

146 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

requisitions, mobilizations, and a score of brutal 
things on them. Millions of them were against 
Lenine — but there was nowhere else for them to 
turn. Kolchak, Denekin and the others gave 
them only hollow promises, that blew up like a 
bubble whenever tested. The old military crowd 
and the old landowners crowded about these 
** white hopes," and the peasants saw that they 
could dream of nothing but a victory for reac- 
tion. If there had been a third party, a fair, 
democratic body, they would have turned to it — 
most of the one hundred fifty million, and by the 
very force of their numbers they would have 
pulled Lenine down just as they pulled Kolchak 
down. But there was no place for them to turn, 
except toward Moscow. 

So this Sunday morning, in this hill village, 
these Siberian peasants told me that first they 
would drive out Japan, and then turn their eyes 
toward the Soviets, and that if Moscow did not 
give them what they wanted, they would fight on 
until they got it. And they will — and they will 
win. Russia will be a peasant republic sooner 
than any one dreams. It can not be anything 
else, because they are eighty-five per cent, of 
Russia's uncounted milKons, and the day is here 
when eighty-five per cent, will always rule. 

Other wonderful days there were, there in the 
frozen hills of Eastern Siberia, when these things 
were proved even more vividly and surely for me. 

147 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

And times without number I felt the warm 
friendly pulse of Russia, beating to the same time 
that the heart of America is set to. 

I recall now one special ride through these 
snow-blanketed hills. My driver, this time, was 
not a young boy, dreaming of dying for his ideal, 
but an old man who had been all his life in Siberia. 
I asked him to tell me just what he thought about 
America. 

*' America did some few things against us when 
they first came here, but we don 't mind them now 
that America has gone," he went on slowly. "She 
did help Kolchak and the military, but she didn't 
know what they were : as soon as she found out, 
she stopped. She didn't understand that they 
were not working for the people, but only for 
themselves. We know America wants nothing 
from us, and that she is the only one that didn't 
want something from us. Japan is different. "We 
hate her and we shall fight her forever.'* 

He was Siberia speaking — ^the great coming 
Siberia. He couldn 't read nor write, but he could 
think straight as a dye about such things as lib- 
erty, freedom, justice. I was like a man standing 
for the first time before some tremendous, won- 
derful thing of God. 

He went on urging his lazy, shaggy, Siberian 
ponies, covered with snow and frost. Pretty 
soon he turned in his seat: "America is a great 
free country, and if America will help Siberia 

148 



IVAN THE JAP KILLER 

there will be two great free countries, and they 
will make the whole world free. As I work here 
among these hills, I often dream of how it will 
be some day: way over there free democratic 
America, and over here free democratic Siberia. 
We shall be great friends and we shall make the 
whole world free." 

I thought of nations of small souls and dwarf 
hearts, dreaming of world power and world con- 
quest. I thought how foolish and futile their 
unworthy ambitions were before the two great 
hearts that some day would beat together to music 
that this Siberian peasant had dreamed. 

"Way over there free democratic America, and 
over here free democratic Siberia. We shall be 
great friends and we shall make the whole world 
free. ,./ . .?' 



CHAPTER VII 

WHITE AUSTRALIA 

It is a big jump from the frozen hiUs of Siberia 
to the tropical lands of North Queensland and 
the smiling acres of New South Wales, but if one 
would know the full story of the New Pacific and 
the world's unrest one must travel far. 

In the chapters that have preceded this I have 
told of the cry of "India for the Indians" — 
** China for the Chinese" — ''Japan for the Japan- 
ese." Here in this great Southland there is still 
another cry — "Australia for the white man." 

Somehow the other slogans sound perfectly 
reasonable and fine, while this one that has to do 
with a White Australia seems far-fetched and un- 
necessary. And yet . . . 

The man who first painted white Australia in 
vivid colors for me was the "guard" on the train 
that had the Brisbane end of the Brisbane-Sydney 
run. 

I suppose what attracted him to my compart- 
ment was my American accent. He began talking 
to me about what odd habits Americans had and 
how a friend of his who had been in the States 
had remarked to him that Americans were rare 

150 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

birds because they shifted their forks when they 
ate. I wanted some more of these strange obser- 
vations so I asked him to have a seat alongside 
me. 

We talked railroading for a time and then 
swung into the popular topic of the high cost of 
living and from there to union hours and Lloyd 
George and finally I mentioned white Australia to 
him. 

"We don't want any of those brown beggars in 
here," he explained to me. "They work twice 
as long and for one-half the pay we work for. No 
sir, we're going to keep Australia clean white. 
We'll fight England or Japan or anybody for 
that. Ugh ! There 's one of those Japanese gents 
in the front compartment of this car. He's a 
commercial traveler, but I hate him just the same. 
They got to whip us before they can come in here. 
I was cold on this conscription for the Great War, 
but they can take me any time to fight these 
Japs." 

Apparently nothing else had interested him. But 
he was talking now with sober repressed sincer- 
ity. He was stating a political code that was 
nothing short of a religion to him. 

That's exactly what this doctrine of white Aus- 
tralia is — a religion; the fervent, fanatical and 
sacred determination of five and one-half million 
people to keep a great continent for themselves — 
for their own race and color and faith. 

151 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

To the great majority of Australians this new 
religion of Oriental exclusion at any cost and at 
any sacrifice is a living breathing thing — just as 
it was to this train guard in Queensland. It is 
Australia. She wiU fight for it and she will die 
for it. No League of Nations, no Association of 
Nations — not even the British Empire — can force 
her to change this religion. It is her very life. 

On its face value one might easily suggest that 
even if this is a political religion it is distinctly 
Australia's business and of little importance to 
the rest of the world. But this is a wrong con- 
clusion because it is distinctly of grave impor- 
tance to the peace and welfare of the whole 
world. For this doctrine of white Australia has a 
tremendous bearing on the whole question of 
racial equality as advanced by Japan. 

And racial equality may be shouted at any mo- 
ment with greater vehemence and determination 
than it has ever been cried before. It is one of 
the unanswerables — one of the unsolvables. For 
eventually with Japan will be the great voice of 
China with her four hundred million and India 
with her three hundred fifteen million. It is 
the ultimate cry of more than one-half of the peo- 
ples of this earth — ^people still barely learning to 
lisp, yet whose voice some day will shake the 
world ! 

Australia refuses and will continue to refuse 
to heed this clamoring — and nothing can change 

152 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

her. She is determined to keep her great, quarter- 
developed continent for herself — to keep it at any 
cost and any sacrifice. For twenty years she has 
been reaffirming this determination mitil it has 
become a faith. 

To-day no Asiatic native can enter Australia—^ 
miless he be a student or merchant or traveler. 
An elastic educational test that all immigrants 
must pass keeps him out; a fifty- word dictation 
test that may include any and all European lan- 
guages. There is no written law that discrim- 
inates against him in any way — he simply must 
pass an educational test that may be stretched to 
exclude a coolie who might be learned enough to 
wear a Phi Beta Kappa key. 

And this religion of a white Australia is no sud- 
den burst of racial hate or fear of invasion : it is 
a slow-moving, ever-increasing political philoso- 
phy that has now reached to the very roots of 
Australia's national soul. 

It was born two decades ago of purely economic 
parentage. At that time there were a few thou- 
sand Oriental coolies in the country and some 
thousands of Kanaka laborers in the sugar dis- 
tricts of north Queensland. But there were 
enough Asiatics and South Sea natives to prove 
to the Australian workmen that direct competi- 
tion with the cheap coolies of Asia, with their 
low standard of living, was a brutal unnecessary 
test. 

153 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

It was Australian workmen who first demanded 
a white Australia — but it is the Australian mid- 
dle-class nationalists with all their pride of coun- 
try and race and color whose voices are loudest 
now in disseminating this political religion. 

Australia has a greater land area than the 
United States (excluding Alaska), yet her total 
white population is less than five and one-half 
millions. Of the non-Europeans there are in 
round numbers 37,000 made up as follows : 23,000 
Chinese (one-fourth British-born), 6,000 Hindus 
and other Indian races, 3,000 Japanese, 2,000 
other Asiatics, 2,500 Polynesians and 500 others. 
In addition there are estimated to be some 30,000 
Australian aboriginals. 

Of the great area of Australia about one-third 
is or can be made productive — two-thirds make 
up the Never-Never country that is good for little 
else than fiction. But this one-third can readily 
support one hundred million people — and Aus- 
tralia to-day has fewer inhabitants than the 
single city of New York. 

The northeast country is tropical and semi- 
tropical and here are milKons of acres of unde- 
veloped lands that can be used for sugar, cotton 
and other tropical and semi-tropical products. 
It is particularly in this tropical district where 
Asiatic coolies and Kanaka laborers could be per- 
manently settled, that one faces the great moral 
issue of the right of a nation to build a waU of 

154 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

exclusion around itself while its rich lands lie 
idle and undeveloped. 

Scientists have been wrangling for generations 
over the effect of tropical life on the white man. 
This question has a deep bearing on the whole 
problem of a white Australia. Recently in their 
convention in Brisbane, Queensland, the National 
Medical Conference devoted an entire session to 
the discussion of this very point. Medical men 
who had lived for years in the tropical sugar cane 
country of northern Queensland gave it as their 
opinion that white men could live and prosper 
in the tropics if they took proper care of them- 
selves. 

This pronouncement was hailed with delight by 
the white Australianists. They were not cheat- 
ing the world of the food that must some day be 
grown in these tropical lands that now are fallow. 
They point to the Queensland sugar plantations 
as their proof. 

From the beginning these plantations were 
worked by indentured Kanaka labor from the 
South Sea Islands. To all intents and purposes 
these ignorant blacks were virtually slaves. The 
workmen of Australia started the agitation 
against this ''slave trade*' and eventually the 
whole of the country was lighted up by a blaze 
of moral indignation over this colored labor. 

Notice was given the planters that after a spec- 
ified time a white Australia policy would be en- 

155 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

forced and colored labor would be abolished. A 
wail of protest went up from sugar planters, and 
'^blackbirders" who profited in the procuring and 
transportation of the Kanaka laborers, but it was 
of no use. In due time the South Sea Islanders 
were shipped back to their homes, and the irate 
planters appeased by a government grant of six 
pounds sterling for every ton of sugar they pro- 
duced thereafter. 

With many misgivings white laborers were put 
into the cane fields to take the place of the 
Kanakas. And to the surprise of a good many 
they were able not only to do the tropical work 
but to do more and better work per man than the 
imported negroes. They were more expensive, 
of course, but the subsidy took care of this dif- 
ference. 

It was a great boon for white Australia. 
''White men, good strong Europeans of our own 
color and own religions, are what we want," all 
Australia said. *'We are going to keep our race 
pure: we are going to keep Australia for our- 
selves.'* 

Little by little this determination has grown 
until to-day it is the soul of Australia's national 
life. From Premier Hughes down to my train 
guard this is a settled conviction. 

I don't know which feels it the deepest — cer- 
tainly it is part of the heart and mind of this 
strange, bent, irascible, hawk-like figure who 

156 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

has been the mouthpiece of Australia for a half- 
dozen years. 

In some ways this man "Billy" Hughes is one 
of the most picturesque and unusual characters 
in the world. Coming to Australia from Wales 
some twenty-five years ago as a consumptive ex- 
school-teacher he was for several years a roust- 
about on sheep ranches in Queensland. Event- 
ually he drifted to Sydney where he opened a 
small bookshop along the wharf. Soon he was 
organizing the longshoremen and leading their 
fight for better wages and better working condi- 
tions. 

Little by little he worked his way up in the 
labor ranks and eventually injected himself into 
New South Wales politics. 

With the formation of the Commonwealth Par- 
liament twenty years ago he turned his brilliant, 
vitriolic talents toward federal affairs and rap- 
idly became one of the foremost Labor party 
leaders. 

In 1914 with the political Labor party in con- 
trol in five of the six states, and heavily en- 
trenched in the Federal Parliament, Hughes was 
first in command under Premier Fisher. Early 
in the war Fisher resigned the premiership to 
become Australian high commissioner in London, 
and Hughes became premier. 

In 1916 he made a hurried trip to London and 
returned convinced that Australia must adopt 

157 



THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 

conscription. But his attempt to push his bill 
through met with bitter opposition from a ma- 
jority of the Labor leaders and the party was 
split wide open. One section followed Hughes, 
who now formed a coalition with the Liberal 
party, retaining power and making for himself 
bitter and lasting enemies of the majority of his 
old Labor associates. 

Each election the Labor party, incensed at his 
''treachery," attempted to break his power, but 
Avith somewhat of the same cunning and quick 
shift and easy compromise of his fellow Welsh- 
man, Lloyd George, this strange little fighter 
holds together his coalition. Frail, with broken 
health, tryingly deaf, he is nevertheless easily 
the most brilliant and capable man in Australian 
public life. He trusts no one, has few friends, a 
million enemies, yet he cuts and slashes his way 
through to the end — ^the master politician: a 
striking contrast in personality to our o^vn soft- 
spoken lawyer in Washington who bears the same 
name. 

In his high pitched, rasping, almost quarrel- 
some voice Hughes briefly outlined for me just 
where Australia stood in regard to Japanese ex- 
clusion. We were seated in his private office in 
the Parliament House in Melbourne. A tiny 
black telephone disk was clapped to his ear and a 
small six by six inch box receiver on his desk was 
pointed in my direction. 

158 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

**We must recognize absolutely that our sev- 
eral countries have certain fundamental, vital, 
individual principles that we can not sacrifice, 
compromise, or even open for discussion to other 
peoples," he explained. **The white Australia 
policy is ours; the Monroe Doctrine is America's; 
the freedom of the seas is Britain's. These are 
outside the province of any League or Associa- 
tion or any international conference. It must 
recognize the rights of any nation to protect its 
own vital interests." 

His was the voice of Australia — of white Aus- 
tralia — not arguing but simply laying down cer- 
tain fundamental religious dogmas that it would 
fight for, die for, if necessary. 

And strangely enough he and most Australians 
look to America for their greatest physical and 
moral support in this new religion. 

**The same Pacific with its same problems and 
questions washes both our shores giving America 
and Australia certain common interests," he 
went on that day. *'We rejoice in the launching 
of each new American battle-ship: it is another 
brick in our citadel of defense." 

Somehow there is a feeling generally about the 
country that England can not and will not under- 
stand the necessity for a white Australia. On 
the tight little island itself there have never been 
any color lines. Australians point out how the 
rich young Oxford student from India is received 

159 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

in the best homes in England as an equal — ^yet 
when he returns to his own India his pride is 
trampled on and his heart is broken by every 
white under-official in the Indian service. 

Englishmen are liberal and democratic with 
themselves in their own country — ^but once out- 
side they are Britishers with all the weight of a 
great far-flung empire and the "white man's 
burden" on their shoulders. And Australia rec- 
ognizes this. She expects no sympathetic under- 
standing of her Australia-for-the-white-man from 
Downing Street. 

So it is that she is looking to Canada and the 
United States. There is a certain amount of jeal- 
ousy against the powerful America, but it is 
smothered in the belief that America stands 
squarely between Australia and ambitious Japan. 

A score of men throughout Australia have ex- 
plained to me how this ** menace" of Japan has 
drawn them to America. *'You could count on 
thousands of us enlisting in your armies if you 
should ever have trouble with Japan," I was told 
from one end of the continent to the other. 

This fear of Japanese aggression amounts 
almost to an obsession. Men who submitted the 
same offer of military assistance in a possible 
war against Japan, would turn to me in sincerest 
anxiety and ask if America would help them if 
they should be crowded to the wall by Japan. 

This feeling that America better understands 
160 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

her Japanese problem than England ever can, 
has severed more than one of the cords that bind 
the great daughter of the south to the mother 
England. Yet to report quite honestly all that I 
found there I must explain that I discovered very 
little desire to cut these ties completely. 

Frankly I had expected that in Australia I 
should see the first real evidence of the breaking 
up of the White British Empire. I had thought 
that here at the end of the world there would be 
independence of thought and action and a demand 
for full and complete freedom. 

Instead, I found that except in radical Labor 
circles and among certain radical Irish Sinn 
Feiners, Australia is closely tied to the apron- 
strings of England — tied sentimentally, econom- 
ically, nationally. Many great business enter- 
prises, even the great ranches, were financed in 
London. And deeper than that, her thought still 
bears a pure British trade-mark. 

Everywhere there was a vague, half -born idea 
that by some magic the empire would suffer a 
transformation that would give complete freedom 
of action and an equal voice to the individual 
commonwealths and yet retain unity. The do- 
minions will never engage in another war unless 
it is their several, individual wishes to do so, they 
argue — and yet when pressed as to what their 
attitude would be if faced with another crisis like 
that of August, 1914, they invariably would 

161 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

answer: **0f course we must always stand by 
the empire when she needs us." 

But not so the radical Labor elements. They, 
with the Sinn Feiners, making up possibly fifty 
per cent, of the Labor population, were frank in 
their determination to end all connection with the 
empire. 

And this mention of the stand of radical Labor 
takes us from White Australia to Pink Queens- 
land. And Pink Queensland after all does have to 
do with the story of the world's unrest. 

In the friendly, hospitable but extremely aristo- 
cratic Queensland Club of Brisbane, where the 
great ranch owners and bankers foregather, they 
told me that real red revolution was abroad in 
the land. 

**A11 this business of State Socialism is nothing 
but the vanguard of a real revolution, ' ' one earn- 
est gentleman shouted at me in frightened tones. 

In the old Trades Hall in the same city Tim 
Moroney, head of the Railway Union, called this 
same State Socialism *' cockroach capitalism." 
''These cheap Labor politicians are just a lot of 
half penny office holders, afraid of their own 
shadows. Red! Ugh!" he grunted. 

For myself, I'd call this most ''revolutionary" 
of Australia's six states possibly a pale, sickly 
pink. As for being red, it simply fails to make 
good on its color reputation. 

Two years ago when the Prince of Wales en- 
162 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

tered Queensland his party came trembling in 
their boots. There was serious fear that the ' ' red 
raggers," or Bolsheviks, or some low-browed rad- 
ical laborites, would hoot the prince or bomb his 
train or say nasty things to him. Instead, Jack 
Fihelly, their acting Labor premier, wined, dined 
and cheered him — and then trailed his departing 
train in a 'plane to say a final good-by. 

In exactly the same degree in everything else 
does Queensland fail to hold up its red reputa- 
tion. Briefly here is what I found in this alleged 
radical state with its sprawling six hundred sev- 
enty thousand five hundred square miles and 
iseven hundred thousand inhabitants : 

A Labor government firmly in power with 
forty-seven seats to the combined opposition's 
twenty-five. 

Seven great state enterprises being worked 
fairly successfully: 

More than five thousand miles of state owned 
railroads, stretching through little settled coun- 
try, operated at small profit : 

A government insurance bureau that has low- 
ered insurance charges some twenty-five per 
cent. : 

A state Court of Industrial Arbitration that 
unquestionably has averted many labor difficul- 
ties and a Fair Rents Court that is actually bene- 
fiting the renter: 

A general forty-four-hour week and a minimum 
163 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

wage that at least keeps the wolf from the 
door: 

And certain weakness for red tape, favoritism, 
and a degree of inefficiency that comes with all 
government departments. 

Of all these points probably Queensland's state 
enterprises are being most closely watched by the 
world. During the past six years that the present 
Labor government has been in power the state 
has entered into seven lines of direct competition : 
cattle ranches, butcher shops, railway refresh- 
ment rooms, produce agencies, sawmills, fish 
shops and a single hotel. For the past year these 
seven show a total net profit to the state of 
94,638 pounds sterling — about $425,000 at the rate 
of exchange at that time, only one, the fish mar- 
kets shoAving a loss — $46,000 for the year. 

The state cattle ranches are sixteen in number, 
cover thirty-two thousand square miles, and graze 
two hundred thousand head of cattle. For the 
year they showed a net profit of $198,000. The 
state management pa^^s the same state rent as 
any private lease, but it pays no income tax. 

The fifty state butcher shops — sixteen in the 
city of Brisbane and thirty-four scattered 
throughout the state — returned a net profit of 
$164,000 for the year, but infinitely more impor- 
tant than that, they kept the price of meat down. 
These state shops, with their low prices, have 
saved thousands of pounds sterling to the ordi- 
nary consumers. Their turn-over for the year 

164 



WHITE AUSTEALIA 

amounted to $2,836,000, and they handled 26,254,- 
893 pounds of meat. 

According to U. H. Austin, the non-political 
Commissioner for Trade for the state, the people 
of Queensland have been saved more than two 
million dollars annually directly through the state 
enterprises. My own observations were that by 
and large they were being run as carefully and 
efficiently as the ordinary government bureau. 
At least they were actually keeping prices 
down. 

The state railways were able to show a profit 
of 0.77% — a decrease over former years. From 
a financial point of view, however, Queensland is 
overrailroaded, with its 5,469 miles serving a bare 
seven hundred thousand people. 

The Court of Industrial Arbitration while fail- 
ing to stop strikes at least has greatly decreased 
the number. There are two judges, appointed for 
seven-year terms, and they make their awards on 
the basis of a general forty-four-hour week, and 
a basic wage for unskilled work of three pounds 
seventeen shillings per week — about sixteen dol- 
lars at the present rate of exchange. The court 
may impose fines up to one hundred pounds and 
six months in jail, but the hold the Court has over 
Labor lies in the fact that if its decisions are not 
obeyed the Union loses its standing in the Court 
and its wage award. Its function, after all, is 
really to get the two factions together and then 
to deal fairly and squarely with the case. 

165 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

The Fair Rents Court is really doing business. 
All flub-dub and horse play is hewn off and the 
court is an informal place where the renter can 
go for protection against a profiteering landlord. 
The judge simply asks two questions — ^neither 
side may be represented by a lawyer and must 
appear in person — ^how much does the renter pay 
and how much did the property cost. If the an- 
nual rental figures more than ten per cent, of the 
property cost then the rent is actually brought 
down to that figure: if the rent is less than ten 
per cent, then it is brought up to that amount. 
That's all there is to it — and it works. 

All in all it's only a pale, sickly pink Queens- 
land. But Queensland labor, like the labor of all 
the rest of Australia is on the move toward the 
Left. In June, 1921, the first All- Australian Con- 
gress of Trade Unions was held in Melbourne, 
and the three hundred delegates laid down a 
broad, progressive policy that labor should point 
toward. 

This goal was frankly for the ultimate socializa- 
tion of industry, production, distribution and ex- 
change. To achieve it both industrial and parlia- 
mentary machinery was to be utilized. To gain 
efficiency the old craft organization — trade 
unions — are to give way to organization of work- 
ers along lines of industry: that is, where all the 
workers in any one industry will work in a single 
union. 

166 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 

All of which means that Australian labor is out 
to turn this great southern continent into a social- 
istic state— to turn it by use of a political party 
and a tightly bound industrial organization. If 
it's revolution, then it's evolutionary revolution; 
and if it's evolution it's revolutionary evolution. 
You can take your choice. 

In the meantime, it's White Australia that 
really counts— White Australia that will act as 
an unfriendly, echoless sounding board to the 
eventual cry of the East for racial equality. 



CHAPTER VIII 

OUE OWN LITTIjE INDIA 

Befoee the days of the Irish settlement I had 
heard the Philippines called ''Our Own Little 
Ireland.'' I preferred to call them "Our Own 
Little India." 

They are distinctly a little India because, after 
all, compared to what England faces in her India 
our troubles in the islands are very small. And 
yet there are troubles there for us — ^for the teach- 
ing of independence must always and ever bring 
a demand for full independence. 

And it is a growing demand. A new generation 
is being brought up in the islands that has been 
taught Americanism by Americans. We have told 
them of the Fourth of July — and they celebrate 
it. And now they ask for their own Glorious 
Fourth. 

Somehow this story of Independence and what 
it means to the old and new generations in the 
islands was best dramatized for me by an old 
pagan ex-head-hunting Ifagao and his young son. 

When I first saw the old fellow he was climb- 
ing down the ladder steps that led from the un- 
dersized doorway of a high-roosted native 

168 



PUE OWN LITTLE INDIA 

thatched hut — climbing down like some ancient 
cock from an upper-story perch. Except for a 
loin-cloth— dubbed a G-string in the Philippine 
Islands — ^he was as naked as the day of his birth. 
And he was as full as a tick. 

He safely negotiated the five-foot descent and 
then, dramatically stretching out his withered 
and shrunken arms and looking across the nar- 
row valley and down the deep mountainside, cried 
in his native tongue: "The whole world is 
drunk! The whole world is crazy!" 

For hours he had been squatting on his bare 
heels with two other ancient fakirs mumbling the 
words, crooning the songs, making the mystic 
passes of a high pagan harvest ceremony — and 
between times drinking deep and satisfying 
draughts from a great earthen jug filled with 
hubiid — the native brew from fermented rice. 
His only worry was his supply of hubud — and 
what his wife would say to him when he got home. 
"The whole world is drunk! The whole world 
is crazy!" he repeated. 

I was thoroughly fascinated and asked my in- 
terpreter to bring him over and let me talk with 
him. So over he came and squatted beside me 
and we talked. His wrinkled, leathery face wore 
a friendly smile and his eyes twinkled with good 
feeling. For half a century he had been priest to 
this pagan tribe of head-hunters in the Ifagao 
valley among the mountains of Northern Luzon. 

169 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

He and his nine hundred thousand pagan and 
Moslem brothers have offered the most difficult 
problem that the American administration in the 
Philippines has had to face. I had come the long 
two hundred and fifty-mile momitain trip by 
horseback from Bagio in order to see just what 
the Americanos had been able to accomplish 
among a tribe which is not only backward but 
savage and untouched at any point by the western 
civilization we are so proud of. 

'* What's all this independencia talk I hear so 
much about ? " I asked the old fellow, after I had 
complimented him on his evident capacity for 
bubud^ 

A strange look came over his face. His priest 
game called for him to be the wisest man of the 
valley and he hesitated to admit his ignorance. 
But we were white men and, there being no neces- 
sity of bluff with us, he finally answered: "I 
don't know — but my son does. You ask him." 

That afternoon I met the boy. He was proba- 
bly fifteen and was dressed in a strange combina- 
tion of native bareness and American clothes. 
Below the waist line he wore only the "conven- 
tional" G-string, but above he sported an Ameri- 
can coat and a straw sailor hat — the size and con- 
dition of these articles making it clear that they 
were legacies from some American of grander 
mold. When he was pointed out to me as the old 
priest's son I went up to him and spoke to him in 

170 



PUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

English. He answered me slowly and with a 
rather pleasing accent. He attended an American 
school, he said, and at one time had had an Ameri- 
can teacher, but at present his instructor was a 
Filipino from Manila. 

**When I finish here I wish I may go to Bagio 
High School," he said. **Then I wish to go to 
Manila University to study to be a doctor. Then 
some day I come back here to this valley to my 
people and teach them how be clean, and healthy 
and everything. My teacher promised me all that 
if I study hard and be good student. So I work 
hard. Next year I go Bagio." 

**And how about this independencia?'^ I sug- 
gested. 

He hesitated a moment. Then he looked me 
straight in the eye and answered: ''We want inde- 
pendence for our islands. We learn that at 
school. America has taught us that." 

It seemed to me I had no need to look further. I 
had found the magic I was looking for — and it 
was the magic that American schools and Ameri- 
can ideals and American sanitation and American 
inspiration had planted among the eleven mil- 
lion people of these enchanted islands. The pass- 
ing generation had missed most of it — ^just as this 
ancient fakir had missed it — but the youth of the 
land, the future of the islands, had made it a part 
of them. They knew what this word independ- 
encia meant — because they knew the magic of 

171 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

American political ideals. We had taught it to 
them ourselves. 

This hill-boy, Juan, had learned it, too — and 
he's the fellow we're interested in; he's the new 
Filipino: in a few years more he'll be running 
the islands. He's distinctly the product of 
twenty years of American influence. And, after 
all, he's the big consideration when it comes to 
weighing the argument for independence. His 
old pagan father, drinking his hubud and curing 
ills by signs and strange words, doesn't matter 
much. What we would do to and for this young 
boy, who would study modern medicine and lead 
his tribe and his islands upward, is the big test. 

If one could put down in a single word the most 
priceless gift that America has made to this new 
generation one would unhesitatingly say 
** schools." That's the password of the Philip- 
pines and one hears it in barrios hidden in great 
cocoanut groves and listens to its echo along the 
freshly paved streets of new cities. It's the heart 
song of a young nation. 

A year ago there were more than seventy-five 
thousand children turned away from school doors 
because there were not rooms or teachers to care 
for them. I shall never forget seeing a barefoot 
mother bringing her seven-year-old boy to a 
home-made nipa school in the island of Bohol — 
a thousand miles south of the Ifagao valley of my 
hill-boy. The room was overcrowded already and 

172 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

the teacher had accepted more pupils than the 
regulations permitted. But the mother couldn't 
understand all these things and when she found 
that her tears could not get her child admitted 
she wanted to pay his way with her peso or two of 
savings. 

*'I will pay — I will pay you all I have," she 
cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. **I want 
my boy to learn so that he will not always live in 
a hut and be poor. Please let him go to school." 

She could not read nor write and she lived in a 
tiny bamboo thatched hut, roosting on stilts, but 
she wanted her boy to become educated so that 
he could have a better place in the world. And 
the same thing is happening over all the islands — 
except among the non-Christian tribes, who are 
taking more slowly to education. It is a glorious 
sign for the future. 

Of the one million two hundred thousand chil- 
dren of school age in the islands, 776,639 are at- 
tending school — a voluntary attendance of ap- 
proximately two-thirds of the eligible children. 
It is a great record, but cold figures fail to show 
the priceless value of this steady stream of 
American ideals of life and citizenship flowing 
into the million homes scattered about these 
islands. It is a new country that is being born, 
and a new people. That hill-boy is typical. 

One should really not visit the Philippines 
until after he has seen India and Korea and 

173 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Egypt and Indo-China, and the other examples of 
outside rule clapped on native peoples. To see 
others first would make one more tolerant and 
sympathetic and infinitely more patient, and 
decidedly more grateful to the big Americans who 
have spent and are even now spending the best 
years of their lives in the islands planting deeply 
American ideals and ideas. 

It's quite easy to see the fundamental differ- 
ence between either British or French or Japan- 
ese or German colonial rule and that of American 
control in the Philippines. It is basically a ques- 
tion of the spirit that is behind the rule. 

Is the highly propagandized ** white man's 
burden" shouldered for the benefit of Manchester 
cotton mills, or Hamburg merchants or Lyon 
manufacturers, or is it for the benefit of the na- 
tive peoples themselves? 

This is where America's supervision of the 
Philippines has shone like a white light in com- 
parison to the efforts of the Old World colonizers. 
America's work in the islands has been guided by 
one ideal : that which is best for the Filipinos. 

Twenty years ago when William Howard Taft, 
with the cooperation of the secretary of state, 
Philander E. Knox, first laid out the broad 
scheme for American work in the Philippines, it 
was under the great inspiration of preparing the 
islands for self-government and then giving it to 
them as soon as they were capable of taking care 
of themselves. 

174 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

Every administration at Washington and every 
governor-general at Manila since then has 
worked along this same general line. Carefully, 
patiently, thoroughly we have planted this idea of 
independence — until everywhere about the islands 
one hears the word spoken. Somehow, no matter 
how you may try to dodge the question, it keeps 
popping up in a thousand different guises. I've 
met it on the dreamy, flower-lit streets of Zam- 
boanga; I've sat with it a thousand miles north- 
ward in the twilight of the gorgeous days of the 
empire in front of nipa huts, while head-hunters 
swayed in their graceful dances: and I've enter- 
tained it in half the clubs in Manila. 

And now America talks seriously of her obli- 
gations to the islands. 

I'd really like to plead my hill-boy's side of 
this case, but after all I'm a reporter and not a 
partisan. All I would do is to put down in black 
and white some basis for judgment and let you 
who read draw your own conclusions. 

My hill-boy interests me — and so do America 's 
national and military necessities interest me. In 
this Philippine problem it is not only what's good 
for the Filipinos that must be considered, but 
what's good for America. 

We'll need a little historic basis to build our 
decision on. 

Two or three years before the World War a 
large-sized scare blew our way from Japan. It 

175 



THE EISINd TEMPER OF THE EAST 

wafted by without damage but, nevertheless, cer- 
tain American militaiy and naval men were 
greatly worried. At that time we had less than 
ten thousand American soldiers in the Philip- 
pines, and about ten thousand Scout soldiers — 
Filipinos commanded mostly by American offi- 
cers. They would have been a nice, juicy morsel 
for Japan to gulp down in one small gobble. 

America's battle fleet — far less than half its 
present size — was cavorting about the blue At- 
lantic, some eight or nine thousand miles away, 
and in the whole Pacific there wasn't a dry dock 
big enough to hold one of our dreadnaughts, or a 
naval base worthy of half the name. Our Pacific 
fleet consisted mostly of a brace of admirals and 
some homesick "gobs" and a tiny flock of gun- 
boats captured from the Spaniards. They would 
have made fair target practise for the Japanese 
fleet. 

Anjrway, the American Army and Navy staffs 
decided in those piping days of 1913 that should 
The Thing happen, our soldiers would concentrate 
on Corrigador, the real Gibraltar of the Philip- 
pines that controls the mouth of Manila Bay, with 
Manila thirty miles away. The fortress, pro- 
visioned and ready to withstand siege for six 
months or more, could hold the bay as a sort of 
refuge for our alleged Pacific fleet and retain a 
base for future operations. In the meantime our 
Atlantic fleet, without base or even adequate coal- 

176 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

ing facilities, wonld sally forth and attempt to 
draw the wily Jap into open naval battle — with 
about as much chance of luring him out as the 
small boy has of coaxing the groundhog from his 
safe retreat. 

Well, The Thing blew over and the scare was 
forgotten and good folks laughed again at all this 
silly talk of Yellow Peril — ^but the general staffs 
of the Army and Navy thought it was high time 
America got from under this far-flung burden 
she was carrying at arm's length, seven thousand 
miles away in the Pacific. 

''The heel of Achilles" they called the Philip- 
pines around Washington those days. In both 
the political and military inner circles the islands 
suddenly grew to be recognized as our greatest 
national weakness. Our gravest dangers were 
in the Atlantic, where the fleet had to be cen- 
tered, but with the Philippines hanging on a 
string as a tempting bait, the Pacific assumed 
new terrors and doubts. 

So the scheme was put forward by certain 
statesmen and navy and army men to cut the 
islands adrift and let them shift for themselves. 
As long as our flag flew over them they were an 
increasing source of danger — and an unnecessary 
and unremunerative danger. 

All this happened along in 1913, and as a result, 
when the new governor-general was sent over that 
same year, he went with clear instructions to 

177 



THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 

liquidate this national deficit as soon as possible 
by rushing through an independence program. 
This was evident from his first move. 

Good and true Americans who had served long 
and faithfully in the islands were dumped out and 
Filipinos given their jobs. And, instead of exer- 
cising his full power in matters of legislation and 
control, the new governor-general chose to use 
only the friendly influence of his powerful office. 

Three years later, in 1916, came the Jones Bill, 
practically giving autonomy and self-government 
to the islands. This was a tremendous move 
toward full independence because, besides plac- 
ing more power in the hands of the Filipinos, the 
preamble of the law carried a definite pledge. 
* 'WHEREAS, It is and has always been the pur- 
pose of the people of the United States to with- 
draw their sovereignty over the Philippine 
Islands and to recognize their independence as 
soon as a stable government can be established." 

Then bang into the fire of the World War 
dropped America. The Philippines and their 
independence and the Yellow Peril and every- 
thing of the Pacific were forgotten in the first 
great surge of patriotism. Even the islands 
tried to do their bit, and there was never the 
slightest question of their loyalty or their will- 
ingness to help the United States. 

With the complete crushing of Germany the 
whole military problem of America was shifted 

178 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

about. The Atlantic was no longer the sea of 
menace and we could turn our backs on Europe, 
and for the first time concentrate our gaze on 
the Far East. We no longer needed fear that 
Japan would spring on us from behind and sink 
a dagger in our open back. We could look her 
straight and fearlessly in the eye now. And we 
could, as well, turn our full attention to the un- 
limited future commercial markets of the East. 

So almost overnight these smiling islands 
changed in the eyes of many men. They were no 
longer the "heel of Achilles." Our military and 
naval men could dream out their great military 
and naval bases here — and our commercial pio- 
neers could plan on the peaceful conquest of the 
East with Manila as their great commercial base. 

To another school of thought the growing im- 
perialistic ambitions of Japan and her then 
great naval expenditures only increased our re- 
sponsibilities of keeping the islands under the 
American flag — and these men would have 
dropped the Philippines not for altruistic reasons 
but simply because they were not worth the 
danger we ran in holding them. 

With the securing of the mandate over the 
former German Marshall and Caroline Islands, 
Japan lay directly in the path of our long trail to 
the Philippines — and it was very evident that 
for us to hold them in case of war would involve 
tremendous and dangerous adventures, 

179 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

All these are purely naval and military wrinkles 
tliat the "Washington Conference went a long way 
toward ironing out. We have pledged ourselves 
not to increase our naval base at Manila, and the 
war cloud has again disappeared. With a fair 
settlement of the war-breeding difficulties that 
were rapidly developing between the United 
States and Japan, the military man must now re- 
sign his concern over the right or wrong strategy 
of giving up the islands. 

The distinctly moral issue still remains, how- 
ever — and that has to do with my hill-boy. To 
study his side of the case we must take a quick 
look at the present internal conditions. 

For the past six years the islands have been 
regulated by the provisions of the Jones Bill- 
seriously referred to by the Filipinos as Bill 
Jones. Under this law the islands are governed 
by the Philippine Legislature, consisting of an 
upper house of twenty-four senators, elected for 
six-year terms, and a lower house of ninety mem- 
bers, elected for three years. High executive 
powers of appointment and veto are placed in the 
hands of the governor-general, appointed by the 
president of the United States. The different 
provinces, corresponding to American states, 
have locally elected governors ; while the districts 
inhabited by the nine hundred thousand-odd non- 
Christian tribes are controlled by the governors 
appointed by the governor-general. 

180 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

The power of the governor-general, under the 
Jones Law, is tremendous, but Francis Burton 
Harrison, the incumbent under the Wilson admin- 
istration, exercised this power only in a most 
friendly way. Both in his appointments and in 
his vetoes he bent to the wishes of the Filipino 
leaders. He accomplished his ends more through 
the influence of his office than through any at- 
tempt to use the great power that was his. 

To all intents and purposes the Filipinos are 
self-governing. Most of the work and responsi- 
bility of running the eleven million people on the 
hundreds of islands that sprinkle this part of 
the Pacific are in the hands of natives. There 
are still a few score of American officials, but 
they are retained because the Filipinos them- 
selves want them to remain. Of the different 
government bureaus only those of Education, 
Audit, Finance, and Science are still headed by 
Americans. 

Probably the worst error in the present Phil- 
ippine scheme of government is the one-party 
system. There are two parties on paper but, as 
it works out, there is actually only one. The oppo- 
sition to the strong, victorious Nationalist party 
is so slight that it can hardly be called real opposi- 
tion. Such as there is centers in an unhappy 
Democracia, which has only one of the twenty- 
four senators, and but four of the ninety repre- 
sentatives. 

181 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Not only is this a naturally unhealthy state of 
party affairs but the whole country is run, 
dominated, and controlled by this single Nation- 
alist party; the real government is in the hands 
of its party caucus and its conventions. 

To aU intent and purpose the Philippine gov- 
ernment to-day is directed and dominated by two 
powerful opposing figures, who are allied within 
one political party for a single cause — ^the peace- 
ful and successful solution of the independence 
problem. These two figures who differ so greatly 
in thought and temperament and psychology are 
Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Philippine 
Senate, and Segio Osmena, Speaker of the House 
of Representatives. 

For practical purposes and national interests 
they are allied intimately and securely, but the 
minute that the independence proposition is set- 
tled, they will begin a battle for individual su- 
premacy. Behind each is a definite faction, and a 
pronounced school of thought that can work in 
harmony with the other only when held by some 
great magnet of universal desire. To the public 
the dominating Nationalist party presents a uni- 
fied front, but within the inner circles there is 
really a growing split. 

Once the independence question is solved, there 
will be immediate and violent cleavage — if this 
does not happen even before self-government is 
gained. The young, progressive, liberal, and 

182 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

pro- American elements will follow Quezon, while 
the conservative, older and financial elements 
will back Osmena. But it will also be deeper and 
more fundamental than all that : it will be a battle 
between the East and the West — Orientalism 
against western ideals. 

Quezon, temperamental, brilliant, frank, senti- 
mental, a man of quick and generous impulses, 
but often wrong, reflects American and western 
ideas better than any other Filipino in the islands. 
With a background of many years in America, as 
the resident commissioner, he has become thor- 
oughly westernized. 

At the other extreme is Osmena — Speaker of 
the House — unfathomable, cautious, analytical, a 
master politician who is an absolute Oriental in 
thought and action. As against Quezon's dash- 
ing, violent, open manner, Osmena is silent, self- 
effacing, cunning. Quezon, the adventurer, 
breaks trails without fear, while Osmena never 
ventures a single step without knowing exactly 
where his foot is going to land. 

Already there has been a split between these 
two groups. And once the armistice for the cause 
of independence is ended, then the forces will 
form naturally into opposing camps. Quezon, in 
tune with the most liberal ideas of the world, will 
open the fight mth such modest liberal demands 
as equal suffrage for women, and equal rights 
in the divorce courts. He will carry this on 
through all shades of progressive ideas. 

183 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

But the great fight that is coming some day is 
one of keeping the islands on the side of the "West 
and not the Orient. A thousand million black, 
brown and yellow peoples along the shores of Asia 
find themselves bound more or less together by 
geographic proximity, color, and the necessity for 
defense against western aggression. "With all of 
these — Japan, China, India and the Malay Islands 
— there is also one basic religion, which is dis- 
tinctly non-Christian. Of the billion on this side 
of the world only the Filipinos are allied with 
the West in religion and ideals. 

Some day, if this East vs. West question be- 
comes acute, it will be of priceless value to have a 
friendly nation in the great East inspired by our 
own ideals ready and willing to stand by the West. 

This point is well worth deep study. A friendly 
Filipino nation would be worth its weight in gold 
on The Day when the test comes. 

Military men are apt to think too much in terms 
of guns and ships. It is a grievous mistake — and 
if we fail to keep our fingers on the heart pulse 
of these islands some day we shall pay for the 
error. 

My hill-boy to-day is close to America. So long 
as his hopes are not bruised too badly or his 
sense of the justice of America lost, he will 
believe in America and the West against the 
Oriental East. Quezon stands out as his leader. 

Unquestionably it is this red-hot, young, West- 
184 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

ern-inspired firebrand, Manuel Quezon, who will 
keep the islands looking to America and the West. 
Some months have passed now since I had my last 
talk with him, but I'm sure nothing has changed 
— except an even stronger determination for self- 
government. 

''The Filipinos are loyal, grateful, and affec- 
tionate to America for all that she has done for 
us," he said to me. *'We are ready to make any 
reasonable arrangements with America and we 
are only too glad to carry out any reasonable 
wishes of America. 

''Of course we want independence now, but any 
unavoidable delay resulting from the present un- 
settled condition of the world, and the necessity 
of fixing future international relations of the 
Philippines, would be understood by us and would 
cause no resentment on the part of our people if 
in the meantime, the spirit of the present Jones 
law be carried out. 

**We do not want any checking of the steady 
flow of independence. We would gladly consent 
to America holding permanent military bases 
here of any kind. In fact we desire that. Natur- 
ally we want the protection that an American 
fleet whose base is here, would give us. And we 
want America to make Manila a great commercial 
base for her future eastern trade." 

"And about the future of American citizens 
and American business in the islands!" I asked. 

185 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

** There will never be the slightest discrimina- 
tion against American citizens and American 
business. They will have every right and every 
protection we Filipinos have. We want free re- 
ciprocal trade, and in every way the fullest, 
freest, closest connection between our countries. 
We want America always to be our big brother." 

I would inject one observation of my own: My 
hill-boy and the great majority of the educated, 
intelligent Filipinos will be quite content if inde- 
pendence comes to the islands any time within the 
next few years. So long as there is no turning 
back in the program of independence that the 
United States has been following for the last 
eight years there will be no trouble. 

The one chance of a deep misunderstanding 
would come from a complete reversal in the pres- 
ent idea of American supervision. A decided 
choking of independence would bring disastrous 
and terrible results. And any attempt to turn 
back the clock and take away liberties and powers 
already held by the islanders might easily bring 
open revolt. 

These coming days will be trying ones for the 
islands, but a degree of patience must be antici- 
pated from all sides. The new governor-general, 
General Wood, is out of sympathy with the idea 
of full and immediate self-government, but it is 
reasonable to expect that he will be moderate in 
both his demands and his actions. 

186 



OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 

Time, after all, is not the essential thing in the 
Philippine question. The essential thing is that 
the steady flow of independence continue and 
eventually end in a close and friendly partnership 
between the two countries. 

Many intelligent Filipinos do not want America 
to cut completely loose from the islands. They 
want eventual independence but they want a con- 
tinuation of America's help and protection and 
they are ready to make any "reasonable arrange- 
ments" with America to gain it. They are even 
willing that America should hold some general 
supervision over them, comparable to the powers 
of the Piatt Amendment over Cuba. 

After all, the Philippine question is not a cold, 
dead proposition that can be solved by a yardstick 
and an engineer's rule. There are other impor- 
tant things to measure besides military expe- 
diency or even what would be safest and easiest 
for America. 

We must be true to our own fine ideals of the 
rights of other peoples, and we must be true to 
the American ideal this hill-boy of mine has built 
up in his own heart. If we must deny him inde- 
pendence we must, for our good, be square with 
the reason why. There must be no wallowing in 
cheap sentimentality — we have had enough of that 
in such false phrases as ''the white man's bur- 
den." Let us at least be fair with ourselves. 

One of the wisest of the American colony in 
187 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Manila, and one of the few Americans there who 
was inclined to view the cry for immediate self- 
government with any sympathy, seemed to put it 
all in a nutshell for me just before I left. 

'* There ^s no question but that it would be far 
better for the Filipinos to continue for another 
generation under our benevolent supervision and 
protection, but if they want full independence we 
must give it to them. And we must do more than 
give them independence : we must announce to the 
world that they are under our protection. That 's 
what an American father does for his daughter 
even when she takes another name. We can do 
no less." 

He was thinking of the new generation of 
these islands — the men and women and the boys 
and girls who owe their very dream of independ- 
ence to America. He was thinking of my hill-boy 
and a million others. He wasn 't afraid to be fair 
to the other fellow — even if he is only the little 
brown brother of the islands. 



CHAPTER IX 

WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI ? 

RotTGHLY it is ten thousand miles from the 
Phihppine Islands to the tiny Black Republic of 
Haiti — or rather to what was the tiny Black 
Republic of Haiti, Geographically and racially 
they are that far apart, but when it comes to a 
discussion of America's *' white man's burden" 
we must pull them close together and see what 
we may reasonably hope to do in one by what 
we have actually accomplished in the other. 

I often think that Shakespere's fine old idea 
about "a rose would be as sweet by any other 
name" might well be reversed and twisted to in- 
clude a nation's expansion — "imperialism would 
be as foul by any other name." 

It's soothing and insidious, this whole white 
man's business — when we do it ourselves. It's 
the other fellow who is always the conqueror and 
the aggressor and the imperialist. It's never 
ourselves — ^not by those names, at least. 

And so it might be profitable to stop a moment 
and consider just whose country Haiti is. And to 
ask ourselves just what business we have there, 

189 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

I asked a rather fine type of Haitian to tell me 
all about it — what we had done and what we 
needed to do. 

''How is that expression of yours?" He 
turned to me. "Unscrambling eggs, that's it. 
Well, that's what America must do here now — 
unscramble the Haitian eggs that have been 
broken during six and a half years of your occu- 
pation. ' ' 

We were sitting on the broad corridor of the 
Haitian Club in the northern part of Cape Hai- 
tian. My host was a cultured elderly member 
of the highest type of the Haitian elite — one of 
the five per cent., mostly mulatto, who have ruled 
and misruled the ninety-five per cent, of illiterate, 
ignorant black natives for the one hundred and 
eighteen years that Haiti has been a republic — 
or rather the one hundred and twelve years that 
preceded the American entry. 

He was known more or less unfavorably among 
his co-elite because he was classed as pro-Occu- 
pation. He was supposed to be one of the few 
educated Haitians in that part of the country 
favorable to the American intervention. I had 
expected that he would '* orate" on the glories of 
what America has done in her six years there — ■< 
possibly, I thought, there might be a word or two 
of criticism about the color question, but nothing 
more than that. 

Instead, what I really found when I penetrated 
his crust of hesitancy and fear, was a gentle man 

190 



^HOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 

heartbroken for his race, grief- stricken for his 
country, disconsolate for his liberties. He was 
not a politician and basically he had only the kind- 
est and the most generous feelings for things 
American. He had been referred to me as a 
friendly Haitian who would tell me the truth. 
After two hours of frank conversation I could 
find no reason to distrust his sentiments nor any 
evidence to disprove his words. 

"It is true that Haiti was in difficult and des- 
perate straits when America first landed her 
troops July, 1915," he spoke in a low passionless 
voice. "During the four years that immediately 
preceded, we had five changes in presidents. We 
had drifted into revolutionary habits and only 
some strong dictator could have saved us from 
ourselves. In times past we had had a number of 
strong men who had been able to hold the country 
in peace and it was only reasonable to expect 
that out of this maelstrom of revolution some 
powerful Haitian, strong enough to have brought 
peace and quiet to Haiti, would have emerged. 

"But we were not given the opportunity to find 
him. Those tragic events that led up to the vio- 
lation of the French Legation, where President 
Sam had found asylum after ordering one hun- 
dred and sixty of his political enemies killed in 
their prison cells, brought a small Legation guard 
of marines from the French cruiser in Port au 
Prince. Then American marines landed by the 
hundreds, here in Cape Haitian and other ports. 

191 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE BAST 

"We welcomed them. We. knew they would 
give our cities a guarantee of peace and protec- 
tion while a new government was establishing 
itself in Port au Prince. We opened up our clubs 
and our homes to them. Everybody was friendly 
and hospitable. 

*'Then slowly they dug deeper and deeper into 
our country. They left the cities and went out 
into the country districts looking for trouble — 
and of course they found it, in small fights with 
ragged, poorly armed revolutionists. We didn't 
mind that; they were still our guests and they 
were still in our clubs and homes. 

"And then things slowly began to change. Lit- 
tle by little the officers brought down their fam- 
ilies with their American color prejudices — and 
we are African negroes. We are proud of it, too. 
and we were proud beyond words of this little 
country of ours. We were brought here in slave 
ships, and in the face of a white world supremacy 
we won our freedom. 

"This is something that so few Americans here 
seem to care to understand: how, for more than 
a century, we had kept this little country our 
own — the Black Republic. True, we had ruled it 
inefficiently and the civilization and culture of 
our two million common people had been pitiably 
low — but, after all, it was ours. In those one hun- 
dred and eighteen years we had twenty-seven 
presidents, many of whom rode into power on 

192 



WHOSE COUNTEY IS HAITI? 

revolutions. But in all those years and all those 
violent changes of government no American ever 
was killed, and what little American property 
was damaged was generously paid for. 

"With the coming of Americans strict color 
lines were drawn ; our feelings were trampled on ; 
our hearts — our spirits — ^were broken. Unfor- 
tunately fully seventy-five per cent, of the Occu- 
pation are from the southern portions of the 
United States and these people came with their 
deep color prejudices. They handled us as though 
we were American negroes in their own states. 
And many of our elite here are cultured people 
who have been educated in Europe. We were 
treated like negro cotton workers on a Georgia 
plantation. ' ' 

I had to question him to get the rest of his 
story. I asked him about the cacos — who are 
either bandits or patriots according to your point 
of view — and about the corvee system of road 
making that apparently brought on the revolt of 
three years ago. He explained how the orders 
went out for miracles in roads: difficult moun- 
tain roads, that were primarily military roads 
necessary for military motor transport, to be built 
within impossible time limits. 

**You see, early in the occupation a gendarm- 
erie was established that resembled the Philip- 
pine constabulary," he went on. *'The higher 
officers were all regular marine officers but the 

193 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

lieutenants and captains were non-commissioned 
officers from the enlisted men of the marines. 
These young men were sent out to districts with 
practically unlimited power. Some of them were 
very fine and some of them were very bad. 

"When the road-building orders went out they 
revived an old corvee law that compelled the 
country people to work a certain number of days 
each year on their community roads. But some 
of the gendarmerie officers abused this terribly. 
Men were worked for weeks at a time and even 
sent out of their districts without pay and worked 
in gangs with armed guards over them like con- 
vict labor. 

"This brought on the real caco outbreak and 
the complete subjugation of our country. To-day 
we have nothing left but a mockery of sover- 
eignty. The 1915 Treaty that was forced on us 
gives American Treaty officials control of our 
customs ; an American financial adviser virtually 
commands our finances; American marines 
dominate us and martial law grips us. Every- 
where there is distrust, fear and blind hate." 

"And is it too late — can the eggs be unscram- 
bled?" I questioned. 

"It will be difficult but it isn't too late," he 
answered. "First of all, withdraw the military. 
Guantanamo is only twenty-four hours away. 
End the distasteful martial law. Send us a big 
fine American head who will do for us what your 

194 



WHOSE COUNTEY IS HAITI? 

Mr. Taft did for the Philippines. Let him have 
charge of the whole occupation and let him make 
the Americans here treat us as equals. If the 
'nigger haters' insist on their color prejudice let 
them be replaced by other men. 

**We who really know what America can do 
and how fine she really is, want your help — but 
we don't want to be bullied by you. We don't 
want to have our country taken away from us so 
that all we have left is a flag to play with. We 
just want you to remember whose country this 
is." 

And this from one of the most ardent pro-Occu- 
pation men in Haiti. Others I talked with said 
with great bitterness that they wanted us to get 
out and stay out ; some of these were only dream- 
ing of getting back their old government grafts 
and again dominating the ninety-five per cent. 

After all, it's an unsatisfactory business to look 
in on civilization while it is being born. It's like 
any other birth — ^it is painful and not nice. Take 
the Philippines for example. 

Some twenty years ago in the glorious old days 
of the Empire they used to sing a song over there 
that went something like this : 

Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos, 
Pock-marked, bandy-legged Ladrones, 
Underneath the starry flag 
We '11 civilize 'em with a Krag — 
Oh, return us to our own beloved homes ! 
195 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

It was a song of happy warriors and their little 
brown brothers — and it was a point of view that 
all booted and spurred men in every corner and 
far-away valley of the world have. There in 
those smiling islands it was softened and human- 
ized by other young white men — ^youthful school- 
teachers and administrators coming out from a 
provincial, generous America with the great 
words of Washington and Lincoln on their lips. 
But even these gentle civilians could not stop all 
the malpractise of the water cure and other 
heroic treatments. 

Here in these kindly states ignorant in those 
days of even the word imperialism there was a 
deep resentment in many quarters, and the crush- 
ing of the insurrection movement and the military 
rule in the islands came near being a national 
political issue. But we kept on with our water 
cures and our school-teachers and our new roads, 
and then came William Howard Taft with a great, 
simple plan of helping the Filipinos, of educating 
them as quickly as possible for self-government. 

And so out of those schools that thousands of 
fine American youths built, and down those splen- 
did highways that American engineers laid out, 
comes marching what is little less than a new na- 
tion. The days of the Krag and its civilizing 
influence are passed and forgotten — and now 
American-educated, American-inspired Filipinos 
quote our own words to us that have to do with 

196 



WHOSE COUNTRY IS EAITI? 

liberty and freedom and independence. And that 
itself is the great proof that America has accom- 
plished miracles in her one great chance. 

Now I didn't hear any United States Marine 
sing that old Filipino soldier song down in Haiti. 
Maybe they don't even know the words — but they 
do know the tune because it's a universal tune. 
Spanish conquistadores sang it, French adven- 
turers hummed it, gallant Portuguese sailormen 
braving unknown seas recalled it, British empire 
builders made it carry their white-man 's-burden 
song; and now for almost a quarter of a century 
Americans have sung it from the Order of the 
Carabao dinners in Washington to the fever laden 
swamps of Nicaragua. It has a lilt and a swing to 
it; it's a fascinating, alluring song; it lulls you 
and charms you; it deadens your senses; it's the 
hardest song in the world to resist; it's the song 
of white men winning a world. 

All of which is rather a roundabout way of say- 
ing that without a background of the wonder 
things that America had been able to accomplish 
in the Philippines and Porto Rico and to a cer- 
tain degree in Cuba, the observer with sensitive 
moral values might be shocked at what he would 
find or would fail to find in a first-hand investi- 
gation of tiny Haiti after six and one-half years 
of American occupation and American assistance. 
He might be quite as shocked as he would have 
been had be gone into the *'insurrecto" country 

197 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

of North Luzon above Manila say two decades 
ago when the civilizing- with-a-Krag culture was 
in full bloom. 

Those were the days of the labor pains that 
preceded the birth of the new Philippines. And 
these are days now of the trying labor pains for 
Haiti. 

If one wished to be very gay he might ask at 
this juncture ''Who is the father?" In one form 
or another this question has been asked for a half- 
dozen years by certain sensitive and inquisitive 
Americans. 

Well, just who is responsible for the Haitian 
scramble! Is it the State Department at Wash- 
ington? — the Marine Corps? — American foreign 
banks? — American foreign business? — who is this 
particular gentleman behind the wood-pile? 

I confess that I haven't been able to find out — 
unless I may be permitted to draw a composite 
picture of a number of villains. If so I would 
make up this composite picture out of about the 
following per cent : 

State Dept. Monroe Doctrine Obsession 15% 

State Dept. Protection Panama Canal Ob- 
session 15% 

Commercial and Banking Imperialism 20% 

White-man 's-burden Obsession 15% 

Marines Spoiling for a Fight 10% 

Just plain bungling 25% 

100% 
198 



[WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 

Now there was some nasty local trouble in 
Haiti — but it distinctly had to do with the 
Haitians. No foreign lives and no foreign proper- 
ties were in grave danger. There was unrest that 
interfered with business and profits, but it is 
quite safe to say that in a century of Haitian 
revolutions there had not been as many Haitians 
killed or as much property damage as the losses 
in one ordinary day on any fairly active front 
during the World War. 

During those summer days of 1915 Germany 
was fairly busy invading Northern France, while 
France and England likewise had their hands 
full entertaining the German troops. American 
banking interests deep in tiny Haitian railroads 
and banking needed but little imagination to 
figure out great commercial opportunities for 
American capital. Under-secretaries and sub- 
secretaries around the State Department, admir- 
als and marine major generals around the Navy 
Department; generals and staff colonels around 
the Army Department, all obsessed with the Mon- 
roe Doctrine idea and equally under the spell of 
the ''necessary for the defense of the Canal" 
propagandists — finally got their chance when on 
July 28, 1915, the mob broke into the French Le- 
gation, brought forth the then president, oper- 
ated crudely but effectively on him and dragged 
what was once Monsieur Jean Vilburn Guillaune 
Sam through the streets of Port au Prince. 

199 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

William Jennings Bryan, at that time secretary 
of state, apparently was converted to the idea of 
intervention. He in turn convinced President Wil- 
son. And, as I have intimated, everybody, includ- 
ing two or three war-ships full of marines, were 
on the bit and rearing to go. This was and is the 
business of the marines — ^to be the * 'first to 
fight" and the last to quit. There are no better 
soldiers in the world — ^but they are soldiers and 
not administrators or school-teachers or mission- 
aries. 

The rest is unimportant as to detail. Briefly, 
in 1915 we forced through a treaty that to all 
intent and purpose gave us the government. The 
figureheads in the hollow office of president 
became a fairly easy tool in the hands of the 
American military. A bitter personal animosity 
between the president and the American financial 
adviser led to the infrequent use of certain ex- 
ecutive powers of obstruction but on the whole the 
present incumbent has been like clay in the hands 
of a sculptor. Marines, with their martial law, a 
native gendarmerie officered and entirely con- 
trolled by marine officers and non-coms, an ab- 
solute control of all government finances through 
the collection and disbursement of custom 
revenues, gave us a ninety per cent, domination 
of the country. 

Some of the things we have done during these 
six and one-half years have been very foolish and 

200 



:WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 

very stupid; we have assumed the role of con- 
querors — ^we have often been cruel and unreason- 
able — ^we have often been inefficient and ineffec- 
tive. Other things we have done have been very- 
wise and very fine: we have stopped revolution 
and brought a physical peace — we have built a 
few roads — ^we have cleaned up scores of cities 
and tremendously improved sanitation — ^we have 
honestly and efficiently collected custom revenue 
and done away with government graft. Some of 
our military officers have been splendid sane men 
and others have been plain fighting men who 
had no appreciation of their great opportunity to 
help both America and Haiti. The same thing 
may be said of the civilian treaty-officers and 
their assistants. 

But it is both futile and silly to bring person- 
alities into even the most friendly criticism of our 
Haitian venture. After all, it is not the individ- 
ual gendarmerie officer tucked away in the lone- 
some hills of Northern Haiti who has really been 
to blame for the present condition in Haiti ; nor, 
by the same token, has it been due primarily to 
his superior, back in the sunlit city of Port au 
Prince. It doesn't take a trained bloodhound to 
follow the scent back to "Washington. 

And there in "Washington we must search 
deeper than any individual. It is the whole un- 
knowing system — the whole hit or miss system — 
the whole lack of a definite foreign policy. For 

201 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

instance, blundering into Haiti, we forced upon 
this colored republic a half-way treaty. Here 
were military men and civilians uncoordinated, 
non-cooperating, lacking a directing, command- 
ing head. Each treaty official reported back to 
separate and distinct departments of the Wash- 
ington government. There was no real coopera- 
tion even among the American officials in Haiti. 
We blundered along getting in deeper and deeper. 
Now we are in up to our heads — that, at least, is 
one very positive fact that no one can deny. Well, 
what are we going to do about it? 

Following two whitewash commissions making 
blindfolded investigations of alleged military 
atrocities — some of which were committed and 
some of which were not — there was finally ap- 
pointed in the fall of 1921 a real Senatorial Com- 
mission with Senator Medill McCormick as its 
chairman. This commission proposed to dig 
deeply into the whole Haitian and Santo Domingo 
business. 

For weeks it held open and fair court in Wash- 
ington ; then came seven hectic trial days in Haiti 
in which, to some observers at least, the natives 
and not the Occupation were on trial. 

Out of all this at least one definite thing will 
come — a real Caribbean policy for the United 
States. And it is a tremendously essential and 
necessary thing at this time. For what we do or 
do not do in Haiti is having and will continue to 

202 



WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 

have a vital bearing on tlie friendship and politi- 
cal and commercial relations of all the Caribbean 
and Latin- American countries, toward the United 
States. "We are being weighed in the scales of 
these tiny and weak half-brother countries — and 
the very fact that they are weak and tiny while 
we are powerful and great makes it the more 
necessary that we be just and fair. 

But there is one other consideration of even 
greater importance. What is the effect of our 
strong arm methods on ourselves — on our own 
sense of justice and fairness? Are we blindly 
putting a righteous 0. K. on our own frequent use 
of force against smaller and weaker peoples — ' 
0. K.'ing them as morally right simply because 
we are doing them? 

Certainly it is high time we ended all the cheap 
deception and sentimental twaddle about Haiti. 
Let us courageously face facts, and if we have 
made mistakes let us bravely acknowledge them. 

Let us stay on and do our duty toward Haiti — 
but let us do it honestly and in a big way. Let 
us withdraw our military force and substitute for 
it broad-visioned civilians who will give gener- 
ously from their wide knowledge and experience. 
Let us make definite pledges of exactly what we 
intend to do for Haiti — and then carry them out. 

The ''white man's burden" will be a light and 
joyous burden then. 



CHAPTER X 

OUB EESTIiESS BKOTHEES BELOW THE EIO GEANDB 

Mexico is not a part of the Restless East but it 
is distinctly a part of the Restless "World. And 
the Restless World is small: the revolt of nation- 
alists in Egypt inspires the tired Hindus in Cal- 
cutta: and what is happening in Moscow in the 
great social and economic revolt there thrills the 
liberal leaders in Mexico City. For in this capi- 
tal south of the Texas border new peons for old 
are being dreamed of. 

I almost missed finding the real heart of 
Mexico. For days and weeks I talked with Mexi- 
can officials and American business men and 
Tampico's oil managers and had the run of the 
Mexico City clubs in general. 

They told me a score and one stories : the pres- 
ent government of Mexico was a dangerous fiery 
red — as red as Moscow and twice as dangerous; 
Mexico was in the high road to happiness and 
prosperity; nothing could save Mexico but for 
the United States to take over the country; the 
oil wells of Tampico were growing salty and in a 
few years more would be useless — and thus the 
Mexican problem would be settled for good and 

204 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

all; the peons were in worse condition than ever 
before; Obregon was the greatest man in the 
world ; Obregon was a one-armed villain. 

I listened respectfully — and then went on my 
way and looked some more. I knew that some- 
where there was a real Mexican story — ^but it was 
as elusive as all truth is. And then one day I 
bumped straight into it. 

It was in the corridor of the St. Regis Hotel in 
Mexico City. A little old gray-haired lady who 
has seen more plain hell than Foch and dreamed 
more dreams than H. Gr. Wells, guided me bang 
into my story. Her name was Mother Jones, and 
it's a right name — she mothers half the world — 
the lower half. 

She led me straight up to a man in ''store 
clothes" and a flannel shirt. His face was lined 
with deep "sun wrinkles" and his eyes were 
gentle and smiling. He had worked in mines in 
Arizona in his younger days and could stumble 
along with English. 

''Here's one of my boys," she said, patting the 
miner's arm as she spoke. "If you want some- 
thing about Mexico he '11 give it to you. ' ' 

I led him up to my room and seated him in the 
one big chair. 

' ' You 're a miner, ' ' I began. 

"Si, but mine in Sonora he shut down and work 
finished. For five six months no work. Miners 
no got dollars, ninas hungry, womans crying. So 

205 



THE RISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 

I say, *I go Cuidad Mexico see General Calles and 
he give ns farm for work.' . . . Last week I 
come here and see Mi General. He take me in his 
automobile to Secretario Villareal and he say 
'Sure we give you miners land. You mus' work 
or starve. You work for yourself. We give you 
big farm, you make small farms and you miners 
go work on own farms. ' ' ' 

My friend sat back in his chair and lit a fresh 
cigarette. It was so simple. Men unemployed, 
and hungry — well put them to work on idle lands. 
Like the Russian proletariat, ninety per cent, of 
them had come from the farms, so they could go 
back to the farms now. The government would 
sell them machinery and animals at cost and see 
them through to the time of the first crop. They 
could pay back in small payments through a 
period of years. Land that most of them had 
been dreaming of for a half-dozen generations 
would be their own; they would become econom- 
ically independent; they would become good citi- 
zens; they would want their children to go to 
school; they would want a voice in the affairs of 
their government. 

And this in Mexico! The land of revolution 
and civil war and the manana habit — worthless, 
drunken, vicious, ignorant, brutal Mexico! 

I looked up Mother Jones again when my miner 
had gone. "I'm getting hot on the real story 
now," I told her. "Pass me on some more." 

206 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

She did. The next day in the tow of a very fine 
young, liberal, States-educated Mexican I started 
out really to see the high officials of the govern- 
ment. I had seen most of them before, but now I 
was to talk to them freely and frankly as fellow 
men, and not as politicians and statesmen. 

Several days later when we had finished the 
rounds I took a train for the northwest and Villa 
and the great bandit colonies. Then slowly I 
worked my way to the border and to the States. 

And so it was that I found the real heart of 
these ten tremendous years of war and revolu- 
tion. It meant a good deal to me because I had a 
background of an old Mexico that distinctly was 
not concerned with miners and peons — that 
instead was loaded down with the weight of for- 
eign interference, alien exploitation, and neglect 
of the common millions. 

In the glorious old swashbuckling days of the 
empire I had gone to Mexico and for three years 
had driven men and cattle alike on a sugar planta- 
tion. Fifty miles below me there were plantations 
where real peonage was practised, and a hundred 
miles away the Villa National where men were 
lured, chained in gangs, herded in barb-wired and 
guarded corrals and worked in steaming tobacco 
fields until death broke their false contracts for 
them. Still farther down, in Yucatan, brave 
Yaqui Indians, with the hearts of lions, brought 
down in prison trains from their hills of Sonora, 

207 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

were worked, beaten and killed on the terrible 
heneqnen plantations. 

In those days I thought Diaz to be one of the 
great men of the world — wise, jnst, brave, the 
savior and maker of his country. 

Then the revolution flared and one day my 
hero Diaz slipped out of Mexico City and foolish, 
stupid Madero rode into power. The grizzled, 
unwashed men who rode with him were to me 
bandits, trouble-makers, the riff-raff, the scour- 
ings of the country. If Madero was sincere he 
was the one honest man among a hundred thou- 
sand scoundrels. 

Then the revolution hit my part of the country 
and I left between suns, bringing out with me the 
story of a foolish Madero and his brutal bandits 
riding their stolen horses behind a banner of false 
revolution. 

That was ten years ago. And now I have come 
out again from adventuring in Mexico — but this 
time I have another story to tell. 

Down in a little village in the state of Vera 
Cruz there is a public plaza that ten years ago had 
two circular promenade walks — one for the gen- 
try in shoes and rehozos, and the other for the 
peons in blankets and sandals. To-day the peon 
walk is overgrown with grass and weeds: these 
colorful tropical nights the entire village strolls 
where only the high and royal dared tread a 
decade ago. 

208 



BELOW THE EIO GEANDE 

That, for me at least, is a part of the real heart 
of Mexico. It is the story of human beings dream- 
ing and fighting and struggling for elusive bits 
of freedom and self-respect — for things they can 
not pronounce but for things they unconsciously 
know they have been cheated out of. 

After all, nothing really counts for much except 
the progress and advancement of the common 
man — and so it is that peons and not pesos, men 
and not money, liberties and not foreign lands, 
honor and not oil, flash before me in this mem- 
ory-film of Mexico and her ten-year revolution. 

It is still a revolution but one-quarter won. 
There is education to be gained, economic free- 
dom to be secured, real political expression to be 
voiced. The revolution may be over and the evo- 
lution now under way. 

From a constructive standpoint the French 
Revolution failed because for hundreds of years 
the common people had absolutely no experience 
in local or national self-government, no training 
in cooperation and voluntary unions. The suc- 
cess of the great Russian revolution was brought 
about not only by the thrilling moving idea that 
gave it fire, but because for generations the peas- 
ants of Russia not only had their own great co- 
operative organizations in smooth working order 
but because they had already tasted the flavor 
of local self-government and had trained their 
hands for it. 

209 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Mexico's fifteen million peons are exactly in 
the same condition as the French peasants of a 
century and a quarter ago — dependent on their 
leaders, many of whom are selfish and ambitious 
men. As yet they have won little of the things 
they dreamed of, though these years of struggle 
and revolution have brought them an abiding 
sense of freedom and a conviction of their inalien- 
able right to its enjoyment. 

That is a great deal, but after all, it is still 
primarily a question of leadership. Their revo- 
lutionary evolution — or their evolutionary revo- 
lution, just as you choose — can be at this moment 
tragically retarded or brilliantly advanced by the 
wrong or the right leaders. 

Mexican political leaders to-day form a triangle 
— one might almost say the eternal political 
triangle. On one side are certain conservative, 
reactionary forces with a small but determined 
representation in the present Cabinet. Behind 
this group are aligned the great old land and 
money interests of Mexico — ^the half feudal Mex- 
ico of the past. 

A second side of the triangle is painted a vivid 
Socialistic red and is composed of radical and 
liberal leaders, such as General Plutarco Elias 
Calles, present head of the Cabinet ; Adolf o de la 
Huerta, with the important portfolio of Finance 
tucked under his arm; Jose Vasconcelos, head of 
the Department of Education: Antonio Villar- 

210 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

real, Secretary of Agriculture; with the more 
radical Luis N. Morones, head of Mexican labor, 
Felipe Carrillo, firebrand leader from Yucatan, 
Samuel 0. Yudico and a hundred more real revo- 
lutionists behind them. They are the fighting 
Left Wing of the government. 

And in between, forming the third angle of our 
triangle is President Obregon, shrewd, capable, 
hard working, with a good set of brains and a 
strong and willing left hand — he has already 
given his right arm to his country. 

It is a difficult job that President Obregon had 
wished upon him — this harmonizing White Mexi- 
co with Red Mexico. It 's carrying water on both 
shoulders. And if there is any single figure in 
Mexico to-day who can perform this difficult task 
successfully it is this man from Sonora. He ap- 
parently holds for the moment the confidence of 
both ends ; he apparently can turn from a confer- 
ence with conservative Foreign Minister Pani and 
talk with radical de la Huerta without changing 
one iota the expression on his powerful face. 

He is a fighter and a politician; which is 
another way of saying that he is both a brave 
man and a willing compromiser. He stands in 
the middle of a bridge with opposing forces on 
both bridgeheads that are quite willing to blow 
him up if he makes a false step. 

He is what we Americans love to call "a strong 
man. ' ' He doesn 't hesitate to order some revolt- 

211 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

ing general parked up against a handy stone wall 
and bumped off in approved style. Nor does he 
hesitate to protect Mexican labor against a dozen 
old-fashioned methods of discipline. 

And his troubles are legion. Not only does he 
face continual friction within his own Cabinet, 
but he must attempt to win over and placate 
American big business — ranch and mine owners, 
railroad investors and speculators and the oily oil 
manipulators — and at the same time give positive 
assurance to his own people that he isn't doing 
this. 

Whatever conscious public opinion there is in 
Mexico to-day — and it is decidedly a growing fac- 
tor — ^it is against the trading of any Mexican 
rights for United States recognition. Over Mexi- 
co there is a determined spirit of nationalism that 
refuses to be bought or bullied by the big 
''brother" to the north. 

"With Obregon it is over and over again a case 
of damn you if you do and damn you if you don't. 
If he pleases Washington and Wall Street he 
faces what might easily prove a brand-new up- 
heaval — and the fate of Carranza. If he con- 
tinues to make dramatic Mexican gestures with 
his one remaining arm there may be no recogni- 
tion, no financial arrangement, no rebuilding of 
the physical Mexico. Why anybody wants to be 
president of Mexico, I don't know. 

But there are some thousands, or hundreds of 
212 



BELOW THE RIO GEANDE 

thousands of lier citizens who do. It is my opin- 
ion that General Calles is one. Apparently he is 
absolutely loyal to Obregon — bnt he is far more 
loyal to his revolution and what it stood for. 

To me Calles is the most interesting figure in 
Mexico City. In the old days he had been a 
school-teacher in the hills of Sonora. His eyes 
still have an odd squint about them like those of a 
dreamer peering into the future. 

His face is hard, with deep seams that sun and 
wind and exposure have left; his voice is rough 
and heavy ; his manner is brusk and almost brutal. 
And yet you would know him for a school-teacher 
and a dreamer. I don't believe he would hesitate 
to kill a man with his own hands — though I am 
sure he would willingly sacrifice his life to help 
the peons of his Sonora hills. 

It was Calles who, as Minister of War under 
de la Huerta, planned most the scheme of dis- 
banding parts of the army and putting the men 
on the land in "bandit colonies." I asked him 
how he happened to figure it out. 

** Nothing could have been simpler," he 
answered me with a trace of impatience. "These 
common men had been fighting for ten years for 
land — so it was the natural thing to give it to 
them. They Ye happy now. ' ^ 

Calles is almost as direct as this about every- 
thing else. He knows what he wants Mexico to 
want. I don 't know how much patience he 11 have. 

213 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

He understands things, anyway — and by 
*' things" I mean the power of the United States 
over Mexico for both good and evil. He appre- 
ciates what the displeasure of Washington means 
and how far Mexican labor, for instance, may 
expect to go before American capital in Mexico 
screams for help. He is a wise man in a country 
where wisdom is at a great premium. 

There are a few other wise men there. One of 
them is de la Huerta. During the six months be- 
tween the death of Carranza in May, 1920, and 
the inauguration of Obregon in November, de la 
Huerta was provisional president. Later when 
Obregon selected his Cabinet he made him secre- 
tary of finance. This means that such delicate 
and all-important questions as the changing of 
the Constitution to suit the Tampico oil magnates, 
the handling of the international financial situa- 
tion and the whole Mexican currency proposition, 
must be directed by him. 

Now, de la Huerta has a strange combination of 
Yaqui Indian, Spanish and Polish-Jewish blood 
racing through his veins. He is not a soldier — 
but he's almost everything else. He is a social- 
ist, an internationalist, a laborite, a radical of 
fairly crimson tint and an extremely brilliant and 
shrewd financier. 

He stands four square with Calles, at least at 
present. They are the heavyweights of the Left 
Wing — they and Luis Morones, the Labor leader. 

214 



BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 

Morones wears checked suits, silk shirts and a 
heavy caliber revolver and has one bad eye. He 
is Mexican union labor: he's the parent and the 
child rolled in one. And Mexican union labor is a 
power that is the **X" — the unknown quantity — 
in the political and revolutionary life of the 
country. 

When the Carranza revolution — which is hope- 
fully referred to as ''the last revolution" — came 
along it was the power of action and the power of 
sabotage of the union labor in Mexico City that 
finished Carranza 's slender chances. Mexican 
labor has neither the organization nor the dis- 
cipline that Petrograd and Moscow radical labor 
had in those terrific days of 1917 when armed 
workmen swung the revolution the way they 
wished — ^but it is growing in the consciousness of 
its power. It has its friends at court to-day. It 
is a conscious part of the government. 

No longer are striking workers shot down by 
machine-guns as they were in the old days of 
Porfirio Diaz — and they know it. They tell a 
story around Mexico City of Celestino Gasca, one 
time shoe-maker and now governor of the Federal 
District. During a railroad strike Gasa was told 
to order out his troops to put down the strike. 

"I resign my office," he replied. *'I am a 
workman first and a governor afterward." 

With such men in strongly entrenched official 
positions, Morones advances with his great labor 

215 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

movement. In every industry and craft is it being 
pushed. Even the plantation workers are being 
effectively organized and already in certain sec- 
tions they have secured increased wages, shorter 
hours and better working conditions. 

Morones is admittedly a radical. And so is 
Felipe Carrillo of Yucatan. Felipe is a tall, 
dashing, fighting leader. He plunges ahead by 
instinct — ^I mean he has no background of radical 
training or education but instinctively takes the 
side of the oppressed. In this particular case 
they happen to be the Indian peons in his own 
beloved state of Yucatan. 

Two years ago when Carrillo was preaching the 
beauties of cooperation to his own Indians he 
decided to hold a great local celebration on the 
Mexican national holiday, the Fifth of May. 

* 'While we are at it, Felipe, let's turn this holi- 
day into a fine old Socialistic celebration of the 
anniversary of the birthday of Karl Marx," an 
American radical friend, Robert Haberman, sug- 
gested to him. 

"All right — that's great! ., . . Say, by the 
way, who is this Karl Marx, anyway?" And this 
from the leader of the Yucatan Socialists. 

I stopped writing here for a moment and went 
over the past two or three pages — and counted 
the word "Socialists," four times. That's too 
many these days, unless I want to leave the im- 
pression that Mexico is about to blossom out into 

216 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

a nice brilliant Socialists' Utopia — and I decid- 
edly don't want to leave any such idea. 

But there is a considerable section of the city 
working-population that has been thrilled by the 
promises of radical agitators. After all, to thou- 
sands of these peons Socialism is a magic word — 
and common people over the whole world must 
live and die by magic words. In Siberia I found 
ignorant Russian peasants speaking of the 
"soviet" as the great magic healer of their 
trampled lives ; it was a word to conjure with ; it 
was a word that opened up a vision of some 
heaven on earth to them. It was a battle-cry, and 
a dream that they would follow at any cost. 

And so it is down below the Rio Grande. They 
have had their own magic words there — ^for ten 
years they were "tierra y lihertad/' land and 
freedom — ^just as for a half -century Russian peas- 
ants found hope in the two words "Zemla e 
svohoda^' — land and freedom. 

Now many of these peons are taking fresh 
hope from the new magic word *' Socialism." 
Down in the steaming henequen fields of Yucatan 
fully seventy-five per cent, of the Indian peons 
joined an actual Socialist party and in their hat- 
bands wore a bit of red pasteboard — a magic 
charm that would bring them land and food and 
happiness. 

Mexico has only fairly started on] the long 
climb upward, but she does have these shibboleths 

217 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

tliat make the trail seem shorter and the burdens 
lighter. After all there are many short-cuts, but 
there are many bad bits of road that must be 
traveled. There's the road of education, for 
example. 

Mexico is making frantic efforts to pave this 
now. A young man with a real vision is going 
after the job. His name is Jose Vasconeelos and 
he dreams of a school in every Indian pueblo in 
every state in Mexico. 

"As a start we are sending to the Indian vil- 
lages traveling teachers who take three or four of 
the brightest Indian girls and train them,'* he 
explained to me. ''These girls in turn open little 
village schools and teach the rudiments of read- 
ing and writing in Spanish. 

**In thirty different cities," he went on, "we 
are opening up manual-training schools for the 
poor children — free schools that will help to give 
Mexico a group of young men and women who 
have mastered a trade. 

Then he dreamed for me a scheme of placing a 
library of one hundred standard books in every 
village. Young Mexican artists would travel 
about the country teaching the natives basket 
weaving and pottery decorations and other pure 
native arts. Small traveling orchestras, with 
their expenses partly paid by the government and 
with free transportation, would bring ideas of 
good music into the villages of these music-loving 

218 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

people. In Mexico City, Guadalajara, Yucatan 
and Monterey there would be great national uni- 
versities. 

It was an inspiring dream — possibly for the 
time being, it will prove only that. And possibly 
it will come true, as other dreams in Mexico have 
come true. There was the dream of putting the 
soldiers on the land, for example — that has come 
true with a bang. 

On December 1, 1920, the regular army of 
Mexico consisted of 338 generals, 15,891 colonels, 
majors, captains and lieutenants, and 77,295 
soldiers. This was only the regular army. Fol- 
lowing the defeat of Carranza thousands of revo- 
lutionists and so-called bandits gladly made terms 
with the new government and for the moment 
became a part of the army. This move was 
necessary for two reasons: first, it secured a 
livelihood through military pay for these men 
who had been following war for years ; second, it 
brought these armed men under military dis- 
cipline and government control. 

This enrolling of all the revolutionary anti- 
Carranza forces raised the grand total of the 
army on the first of 1921, to 669 generals, 18,992 
officers, and 93,132 men. To keep this force going 
an appropriation of one hundred and thirty-one 
million pesos for the army and thirty-five million 
for the arsenals was necessary, out of a total 
federal appropriation of two hundred and seventy 

219 



THE EISINa TEMPEE OF THE EAST 

million — more than fifty per cent, of the total gov- 
ernment income. 

Drastic methods were decided on. A triple 
plan affair was devised whereby first of all there 
was to be a decrease through voluntary discharge, 
that was to be further augmented by forced dis- 
charge of all incompetent soldiers and officers 
who could not establish their rank; but the real 
solution was the formation of a number of sol- 
dier agriculture colonies. 

The words *' Bandit colonies" may have a 
rather bad sting to them — but not down in Mex- 
ico. For ten years the difference between 
''bandits" and "revolutionists" has been a mat- 
ter of point of view. So these colonies might just 
as well be called "revolutionary colonies." 

And the big thing about them is that they have 
actually been formed and are really working. 
Thousands of soldiers who for years have been 
following the trade of fighting — with the dream 
of land always somewhere in the background — 
have been put on the land in colonies, supplied 
with the tools of farming and financially backed 
and cared for by the government. Mexican 
swords have actually been beaten into plow- 
shares and pruning-hooks and into books and 
pencils — ^money saved from army disarmament 
automatically goes into education. 

I know of no greater adventure in pioneering 
than this back-to-the-land movement of these sol- 

220 



BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 

diers who have been fighting and revolting 
for years, that land and some intangible, indefin- 
ite thing called "freedom," might be theirs. 
Villa is one of them — Pancho Villa, despised 
bandit, or beloved knight, just as you choose. I 
searched him out in his own private colony — and 
the Villa I found was a vastly different Villa from 
the two-gun villain of the American press. I will 
tell you of him just as I found him and just as he 
appeared to me. 

For three long dusty days I rode north from 
Mexico City — then an eight-hour ride on a 
bumpy railroad-stub to the filthy little mud vil- 
lage of Rosario in the hills of Northern Durango: 
then a six-hour valley-ride in a rickety, high- 
wheeled vehicle behind mangy, dwarfed mules to 
the ranch. 

There, in a long, one-storied adobe house that 
nestled against a great brown adobe church, I 
found him — Don Pancho, the Killer, or Don 
Pancho the Knight, as you will. In soiled shirt, 
beltless baggy trousers and the grimy hands of a 
Mexican rancher, he greeted me in the doorway 
of his bedroom. He was a big two hundred- 
pound man with crumpled black hair, a well 
trimmed mustache, a great handsome head with 
unusually high forehead and remarkable black 
eyes. 

He was friendly and hospitable. We sat down 
in his room for a while and then he led the way 

221 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

into the patio and through a gateway to a long 
shed where he kept the farming implements the 
government had given him. Here were parked 
two or three heavy gasoline trucks, a pair of trac- 
tors, a threshing-machine, and a full set of wheat 
drills, plows, cultivators, and the score and one 
implements used on a great modern ranch. 

Villa was proud of them. He slipped into the 
seat of a baby tractor and threw on a lever. He 
petted it almost as he would have petted a horse. 

*' They 're all ready for use when we want 
them," he said. ''I've about six hundred acres of 
wheat in now and next year I'll have several 
times that number. . . I'm going to go into the 
cattle business, too. I could run forty thousand 
head on this place — ^if I had the money to buy 
them. . . . Some people are afraid to trust me. 
They wouldn 't even trust me for cattle. ' ' 

He stopped and looked down the long trail of 
years that have passed. He was triste — ^he was 
a defeated champion, dreaming of days and 
glories that were. 

For a minute or two he sat on the little iron 
seat of his baby tractor and dreamed. A blazing 
Mexican sun streamed down into the alleyway: 
everything was motionless and still except for 
the droning voices of men loitering about in front 
of the church. 

"Caramha!" he sighed. His dream was over. 
Forgetful of his injured leg, he jumped down 

222 



BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 

from the baby tractor and led the way to his black- 
smith shop. 

With the pride of a boy Villa pointed to the 
open door: *'See, it's unlocked; everything is 
safe around here. You could leave your coat and 
purse anywhere and they would never be 
touched. ' ' 

I muttered words of praise while he led me to 
the front of the old adobe church of the village. 
A score of men were lounging about and just 
within the entrance in front of an improvised 
store counter, a half-dozen ex- Villa soldiers were 
making Sunday morning purchases of lard, cigar- 
ettes, corn and beans. 

We edged our way past the counter and walked 
to the rear of the church. Everywhere there were 
piled bags of com, cans of lard, tools, and the 
traps and clatter of a store and a warehouse. 

There were no flickering candles nor clean 
altar cloths, but the statuary and the pictures had 
been left undamaged and were still in place. 

Villa pointed to pictures of the saints and 
smiled. "When I came here these poor fellows 
were thin and hungry," he joked. **See how fat 
they are since I brought in all this corn and food. ' ' 

After a minute or two he led me out of the 
church, down a filthy narrow mud street, through 
a large door into a big patio surrounded by a 
string of rooms made of adobe brick. 

"This is to be our school," he said with tre- 
223 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

mendous pride. ''I'm fixing it up as fast as I 
can. Everything is tumbled down and the roofs 
have fallen in, but I am repairing them and in a 
few weeks we shall have a school here with four 
teachers. It's going to be the best school I know 
how to start, and every child on this ranch is going 
to attend. . . . Schools are what Mexico needs 
above everything else. If I was at the head of 
things I would put plenty of schools in the cities 
and towns and besides I'd put a school on every 
hacienda and ranch. ..." 

Again he fell to dreaming. "Poor, ignorant 
Mexico," he said slowly. ''Until she has educa- 
tion nothing much can be done. I know — I was 
twenty-five before I could sign my own name. 
And I know what it is to try to help people who 
can't understand what you are trying to do for 
them. I fought ten years for them. I had a prin- 
ciple — I fought ten years so that the poor man 
could live like a human being should, have his 
land and send his children to school and have 
human freedom. But most of them were too 
ignorant to understand my ideas. That's the 
reason I quit fighting. I kept fighting as long as 
Carranza was in power, but now with Obregon 
at the head I'd be doing more harm than good, 
so I 've quit. . . . Nothing can ever be done until 
the common people of Mexico are educated. ' ' 

No one knows better than this strong, half- 
ignorant man what this job is or how necessary it 

224 



BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 

is. With education, he might now be living in 
the palace in Mexico City instead of on an 
unknown ranch in the hills of Durango. 

"I am through fighting," he went on. "I only 
want to live and die here in peace and do what I 
can to help my own people, and then when I'm 
finished, Mexico will say that I was not the bad 
man I have been pictured. ' ' 

His voice trailed off; then once more: "I've 
finished fighting. Nothing will ever get me to 
pick up my rifle again — and we have two thou- 
sand seven hundred rifles among my own men in 
these hills here — ^unless Mexico is invaded or the 
government fails to treat my own people justly. 
Then they'll hear again from Pancho Villa. . . 
Adios! Buena fortuna!'* 

I climbed up to the back seat of the old buggy. 
The driver cracked his whip over the flank of 
the little black mules and we were off. It was six 
hours to Eosario and ham and eggs at the China- 
man's freight-car-restaurant — and then two days 
of dust and heat to the border. 

I had found the heart of the Mexico of to-day — 
and it was beating bravely for new peons for old. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE LAMP BEAEERS 

Haed-headed business men, both in America 
and in foreign fields, may scoff at the idea of 
**soul savers" having a very particular and a 
very important part in this story of world unrest 
— but they have, just the same. It is a star part. 

The day when Force shall cease to be the vehicle 
for the dissemination of our civilization is fast 
dawning. Lord Eeading in India is learning — 
just as the Allied Powers have learned in Russia 
— that ideas can not be checked by bayonets nor 
projected by bullets. They can only be success- 
fully and lastingly combated by better ideas, sired 
by sympathetic understanding and a real desire 
to help in the long climb upward. 

And this is where the missionary comes in — 
the new model missionary, with his native student 
protegees. 

I'm tempted to tell the real missionary story 
of Korea. I promised I wouldn't, but there are 
times when even a word pledge must be stretched. 
I'll let the story itself plead its own cause and 
square me, if it can. 

It was four o'clock in the morning and it was 
226 



THE LAMP BEAEERS 

cold and drizzly and muddy and we were hungry 
and absolutely tired out. Our car had broken 
down and we went trudging along a sloppy dirty 
road in the general direction of Seoul, the capital 
and heart of poor discouraged Korea. It had 
been almost a year since the great burst of revolu- 
tionary fire had spread over this unfortunate 
country, but the embers of revolt were still smold- 
ering — the blackened ruins of homes and hopes 
still lay like deep pitted scars over the country. 

We — two young missionaries and myself — ^had 
driven the ninety miles to a tiny, nameless Korean 
village where a Christian church and a score of 
native houses had been burnt by a senseless, 
Japanese non-commissioned officer and his men. 
Our car had broken down a few miles from Seoul 
and now early in the morning we were plowing our 
way home through melted snow and a cold drizzle. 

I was out of patience with the Korean revolu- 
tion and thoroughly disgusted at the Japanese 
soldiers for not having done their village-burning 
closer to Seoul — and peeved at missionaries and 
the whole world in general. And I was dead tired 
and so hungry I would have fought Jack Dempsey 
for the right to chew the leather upholstery in the 
car. I was looking for an argument. 

*'You missionaries in Korea have got a lot of 
nerve to deny you've had anything to do with this 
revolutionary movement here," I began on the 
gentlest and smallest of the pair. 

227 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

**Why, we don't deny weVe had something to 
do with the inspiration of the revolution,"' he 
answered me in a pained but very kindly voice. 
**How can we deny we had a considerable part in 
this great awakening of Korea? Isn't Christian- 
ity a militant religion? Isn't it a religion that 
teaches right and justice and equality, and com- 
mands that men fight for their liberties . . . ? 

"The Japanese are right in their contention 
that American missionaries have had something 
to do with the re-birth of Korea. We are to 
blame indirectly for a lot of this trouble. And" 
— ^he hesitated for a second or two as we strode 
on — *'and we're proud of it." 

I slipped my arm through his as we walked side 
by side. I was ashamed of myself. He and the 
other exiles working their lives out in these far- 
away lands for the barest of a living, were doing 
the big thing. They were taking the great chance. 
There were thoroughly brave men. 

A day or two later, after we got back to Seoul, 
one of these same men shunted me into the back 
room of a small Korean store, owned by one of 
the leaders of the revolution. We sat cross- 
legged with him on the floor and drank tea. And 
we talked of this tremendous spiritual awakening 
of a country that a few years ago was dead. 

My queer old host, pulling at his thin little 
beard and eying me with friendly glances, was a 
Korean Christian. 

228 



THE LAMP BEARERS 

"More than seventy-five per cent, of the Ko- 
reans who have taken an active part in our great 
revolution against Japan are Christians," he said 
to me through my missionary interpreter. **The 
Christian Koreans have been the real leaders. 
"We have kept the fire burning. Your American 
missionaries and your dollars have built schools 
for us, and hospitals, and they have given us new 
hearts and fresh hopes. They have taught us 
many fine things. They have prepared hundreds 
of native missionaries and teachers and doctors 
and nurses who in turn will carry on the things 
they have learned from you. Korea could never 
have lifted up her head again without Christianity 
to help her." 

And these inspirers of unrest were the same 
missiojiaries whom I have heard laughed at and 
damned a hundred times in steamship smoking- 
rooms and hotel lobbies and in the clubs and 
streets of half the world. For it is distinctly the 
smart thing in the Far East to assume the su- 
perior attitude over the missionary. Somehow 
he doesn't fit into the free and easy gesture of 
the foreigner's life in the Orient. 

Then, too, he gives his life to help the native 
peoples — and not to trade on them or make money 
out of them. He has an entirely different point 
of view from the average foreign business man 
who wants to make his fortune and then leave the 
"beggers" to the next foreigner who comes along. 

229 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

These men — and even the consular and diplo- 
matic people — come and go : and when they leave 
they take their hearts with them. Their influence 
can not be anything but negligible — they 're work- 
ing primarily for themselves or their own govern- 
ments and they can't possibly give any great 
amount to the native. 

But not so the missionary. He must and he 
does give everything — ^years, dreams, heart, 
hopes, life, everything. That's what makes him 
great and Ms influence tremendous. 

Not long ago one of the finest members of the 
diplomatic corps in Peking said in an address: 
"The American missionary worker and teacher 
and doctor have done more to gain the friendship 
and respect and good will of the East for America 
than all the business men, consular and diplomat- 
ic agents who have ever sojourned here, put to- 
gether. ' ' And he was a diplomatic agent himself. 

It is there in China that you really see what 
tremendous effect the missionaries and their 
schools and ideas can have on an ancient and 
stolid people. "When I first went to China I didn't 
believe this. I resented every phase of foreign 
missionary influence. I thought it was a brazen 
interference in the intimate life of a people who 
had more thousands of years of tradition and 
custom and proved civilization back of them than 
we had scores of years, I resented the mission 
boards with their great walled compounds: I 

230 



THE LAMP BEAEEES 

resented the whole business of trying to force our 
standards and ideals and civilization on a people 
who apparently didn't want them. 

Then I took a trip into the country districts of 
China. There were mud and dirt and dust and 
filth everywhere. It was the filth of thousands 
and thousands of years. And there was disease 
of every imaginable sort. And an ignorance of 
all sanitation and modern health standards so 
appalling that it is indescribable. 

Each little walled town was like all the others — 
the great walls of China, with the village walls 
themselves, had shut out all that was new and fine 
and necessary in the new world. 

For endless miles and days I jogged through 
these picture-books of the past: a toothless old 
woman with bound feet grinding flour at a stone 
mill that could easily have come down from the 
time of Confucius; a forked stick plow drawn 
by two mangy donkeys — ^donkeys that might have 
carried stones of the Great Wall, and a plow that 
might have cultivated grain for the men who built 
it; adobe huts with mud plastered walls copied 
after the models of a thousand years past. It 
was a panorama of long ago that I viewed — a 
panorama of strong, virile men and women who 
had turned to stone in their tracks and could only 
be given the breath of life by the warm summer 
winds blowing from the new lands and civilization 
of the West. 

231 



THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 

In these few days that I lived close to common 
China I grew tremendously fond of these kindly, 
hospitable, smiling people. They are great and 
they are a distinctly superior folk, but they need 
us. And when I say **us" I mean those of "us" 
who are willing to give our years and our hearts 
and all our hopes and dreams for some one else. 
And that's what these missionary teachers and 
doctors and workers in China are doing. 

On this trip we stopped mostly at filthy little 
native inns, but several times we were invited into 
homes. Some of them were fairly clean ; most of 
them were not — ^but one I remember was immacu- 
late. That was the home of a Chinese Christian 
preacher. His home and his home life were ex- 
actly what you would expect from a man who had 
been inspired by the ideals and customs and codes 
of the finest Americans. 

There were no bound feet around his house and 
there was no great-lord-and-master man worship, 
and there was no Wife No. 2 or concubine No. 1. 
It was a spick and span, clean little Christian 
home — ^in the best and highest sense of the word. 

In the same village we visited the tiny mission 
where they held services on Sunday. Probably 
forty or fifty of the native Christians gathered 
to pay their respects to me. They asked me to 
talk to them, and I told them pretty much what 
I Ve just written here. When I had finished they 
shook hands with me and two or three of them 

232 



THE LAMP BEAEERS 

told me with great pride that they had sons in 
American mission schools. I recall that one old 
fellow, bursting with joy, explained that he had 
a daughter in an American school. 

This was the big thing — schools to educate 
native boys and girls in modern ideas and new 
moral codes and sanitation and medicine and all 
that the past two or three thousand years have 
given the world in comfort and right living. My 
missionary companion was helpless to do any- 
thing for China with his own hands, but he could 
train the hands of ten thousand Chinese youths to 
go out into the highways and byways and slowly 
but surely break down all the stupid superstitions 
and traditions and customs of the dead past and 
give them instead the best of the West. 

This is a big part of the new missionary idea. 
Religious proselytizing only, among a people 
bound as tight by traditions as are the Chinese, 
is only half a job even if successful. The brand- 
new model missionary would teach young men to 
teach China modem civilization, modern Chris- 
tian standards and ethics and codes, modem 
science and medicine — and he could rest mighty 
certain that China's soul would come out of the 
process all right. 

After all, it is the work done by the mission 
schools among the student body of the ancient 
East that is having the deepest effect in the great 
awakening of these slumbering millions. **The 

233 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

germ carriers of unrest" some one has called 
these brave, fighting young students of the East. 
And that is what they are — bearers of the disease 
of freedom — disseminators of the plague of na- 
tionalism — transporters of the fever of revolt. 

No one can possibly write about those rising 
tides of unrest that are splashing against all the 
shores of the world without writing about these 
students. They are the very heart of it all; and 
they are the hope of it all. 

Without their youth and enthusiasm — ^without 
their vision and strength — ^without their bravery 
and determination the great awakening of the 
East could not come about. They blow the pre- 
cious breath of warm life into dreams of freedom 
and make them come true. It is their voices that 
are calling the old tired world out of its past; 
it is their unfettered feet that are breaking the 
trail to new days and new visions. They are 
happy to fight and to die. 

I can hardly keep the tears out of my eyes even 
now as I think of those fine, brave young students 
of India. To go against the established thing, to 
dare stand against the government and the 
dominant race — to dream and to act and to die if 
necessary for their own people — this is what 
thousands of the young men of India are doing. 

In the great Mohammedan University at Ali- 
grath in Northern India the student body with- 
drew from the government supported school 

234 



THE LAMP BEARERS 

under the inspiration of the Moslem leader, 
Mohammed Ali, and started up a tent school on 
some vacant ground near by the walled enclosure 
of the old college. Many of the parents objected 
to the great movement and all the power and influ- 
ence and weight of the established thing — of the 
past — tried to break the flaming spirit of these 
Indian boys, fighting as they believed for a New 
India, a free India — and failed. 

In Calcutta a tall Indian boy with a beautiful 
Arion head and the soft grayish brown skin of 
the high caste Arion, came to my room in the hotel.. 
He wore very simple inexpensive robes and there 
were sandals on his feet. He was trembling with 
anger when he entered — the hotel elevator starter 
had made him walk up the stairs because he was a 
native. 

He took me over to the square near his college. 
There a crowd of poorer natives were gathered 
about a soap-box orator — a youthful student. He 
was preaching "SwadashV — the boycott of all 
foreign goods in preference to native makes. He 
wasn't stirring up enthusiasm for the coming 
football game — ^he was arousing a sleeping in- 
articulate people for the thrilling game of free- 
dom and liberty that was about to be played. 

And I can see now a great colorful crowd of 
the common poor of India gathered on the sandy 
shore of the gorgeously beautiful harbor at Bom- 
bay. Never has such a great wave of color — 

235 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

turbans and robes of white and red and greens 
and blues and scarlets aU blending into the back- 
ground of this magic bay — ^never has such a tide 
of color swept over me. 

Here in the twilight — the twilight of the world 
that was, it seemed to me — these same youthful 
students came with their dreams and their mes- 
sages and their words of inspiration. It was a 
great game they were playing — a game that made 
our American college sports seem small and so 
trivial. 

And the Y. M. C. A. foreign secretary has had 
his great part to do with all of this. Throughout 
the East <*Y" men have exerted a tremendous 
influence in giving life to the new ideas of 
democracy and political and social consciousness 
that are slowly permeating the ancient life of this 
quarter of the world. Their schools and training 
courses and their wide-open meeting-rooms have 
gone a long ways toward awakening China. Many 
of the vigorous young Chinese men who are fight- 
ing their way into the new political life of the 
country and trying to uproot the old Manchu 
trained politician are Y. M. C. A. taught and 
inspired. 

In Japan, Korea, China, Siberia — everywhere 
— the Y has been driving in its licks for the best. 
None has ever told about the magnificent work 
of the organization in the frozen, forgotten hills 
of Siberia. Not only were countless American 

236 



THE LAMP BEAEERS 

soldier boys, scattered in small groups over htm- 
dreds of miles, given cheery entertainments and 
loafing-rooms and scores of little services, but 
the Y attempted to bring some little dash of 
pleasure into the dreary lives of the Siberian 
soldiers themselves. 

This was in the days when the misguided reac- 
tionary Kolchak was fighting to turn back the 
clock and return to the great landlords their con- 
fiscated estates and set in power again the ousted 
czar officials. A number of Y. M. C. A, secre- 
taries with their picture-machines and their mov- 
able canteens were sent to the discouraged army. 
Little by little they worked their way into the 
confidence of the common soldiers and told them 
to fight on and bravely — for democracy and com- 
mon freedom. They told them of American insti- 
tutions and our own Revolutionary War. They 
thrilled them with this word democracy. 

When Kolchak 's reactionary advisers heard of 
these Americans who dared give ideas with pic- 
ture-shows and democratic ideals with hot coffee 
they summarily boosted them out of their army. 
I say boosted because it is distinctly a boost to be 
kicked up and out for spreading ideas of Ameri- 
can democracy. I know a lot of fine and pic- 
turesque things about Y. M. C. A. work all over 
the world, but none of them ever made me quite 
so proud of this great institution as their being 
"given the air" by Kolchak 's czarist officers. 

237 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

It's a long trail from Siberia to India, but 
there's not a foot of it that doesn't feel in some 
indirect form or another the influence of the 
foreign mission worker. What they've been able 
to do in India itself is tremendous. And the 
thrilling thing about their work in this great back- 
ward country is that it has been done for the most 
part among the lowest caste natives — the poor, 
abused, underfed, despised ** untouchables." No 
one else but foreign mission workers has ever had 
time to give them more than a kick back into their 
mud wallows when they have tried to climb out. 

In Egypt, too, and all the Near East, mission 
schools and hospitals and missionary influences 
have made deep and tremendous impressions. To 
these ancient and backward peoples they have 
brought the fresh and fragrant breath of new 
hope and of cleaner and happier lives. Their 
hundreds of schools have taken the thousands of 
boys and girls from homes of ancient days and 
taught them of the New World; and then sent 
them back to their decaying cities and villages to 
show by precept and example that 1922 is a little 
further down the road to happiness than 1922 
was. 

And the same things hold true the world over. 
With their hospital school they have sent out doc- 
tors and nurses to conserve life and lessen the 
suffering and pain. The little hospitals and free 
climes have done much of this work. 

238 



THE LAMP BEARERS 

I recall vividly a very small, old-fashioned 
cUnie and hospital in Northern Manchuria. It 
was the only one in the whole district, and the 
doctor who conducted the clinic had been there 
for more than forty years. It was a down-at-the- 
heels old place and in no way was it the immacu- 
late, spotless hospital we demand in America. It 
was dirty, but it was priceless. 

This old doctor and his sweet little wife, and 
one or two Chinese girls they had trained, ran 
the whole thing. And they only had a few hun- 
dred dollars a year to do it with — ^not enough to 
buy the medicines they really needed. 

There were no clean hospital cots with pure 
white linen: there were just long benches where 
the patients could sleep and a long rough table 
where the rice that the ancient one-eyed cook pre- 
pared, was served. And the old doctor's operat- 
ing-room would have brought tears to your eyes. 

But he was doing his job. He was saving lives 
and easing pain and trying to make people a little 
happier — ^poor people whom the rest of the world 
had forgotten. He wasn't bothering about souls — 
he was bothering about sores. He was helping 
helpless people. He needed no soldiers with bay- 
onets to back him up: he was spending little of 
his precious time bothering about the white man's 
burden — ^he had something else to do with his 
hours. 

And I imagine if a certain carpenter of Judea 
239 



THE RISING TEMPEE OF THE EAST 

would ever happen along those dusty tired roads 
of North China He would stop at this old mission- 
ary doctor's little free clinic and put His arm 
around him and tell him that his was the great- 
est hospital in the world. 
It seemed that to me. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WOBUD's UNDEE-DOGS — ^A CONCLTJSION" 

One has a strange half foreboding to come thus 
to the end of a survey of a world of real people — 
to take one look backward down the long dim 
years of the past and to steal one swift glance 
ahead into the unknown and unbroken trail of 
to-morrow. 

After all, it is something to be writing about 
living, breathing people, and to try to catch and 
throw on paper, in black and white, their dreams 
and their aspirations — their struggles and their 
battles. It is a tremendous responsibility, replete 
with possibilities for good or evil. 

As I try to value what I have said through all 
these pages — ^to examine my own point of view 
and weigh the job of reporting I have done — ^I 
feel that possibly what I have written here in 
the chapter on Mexico about Felipe Carrillo of 
Yucatan may be said in criticism of me as well: 
''He plunges ahead by instinct — ^he has no back- 
ground of radical training or education, but in- 
stinctively takes the side of the oppressed.'* 

I might as well admit it: common people — 
Mexicon peons, Filipino taos, Indian ryots, 

241 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

Egyptian fellaheen, Siberian peasants, Chinese 
coolies, Haitian habitants — ^these are the people 
who interest me, and it is their struggles and 
hopes that thrill me. I have no concern with 
unrest and revolution except as it touches them 
and their lives. The philosophies, the theories, 
the mere study of great political and social and 
industrial changes mean very little to me — ^but 
better homes and better food and better children 
and education and new hopes for common mil- 
lions mean a great deal to me. 

It may be that I have misplaced some little 
enthusiasm. I have tried very hard to be always 
the observer, always the reporter, but en- 
thusiasms will creep in now and then. And 
enthusiasms make sentimentalists out of the best 
of us; and when it comes to the future hopes of 
common people I am just that. 

Yet I am confident of one thing: the seething 
unrest of the East will bring great sorrow before 
it brings great good. There can be no short-cuts 
to any real advancement. If the revolt of India 
should by chance bring an early return of self- 
government, common India will miss the fair jus- 
tice of the British raj. She will miss the clean 
efficiency and honesty of the British administra- 
tion. She would be better off for a generation 
or two under British rule — ^if she would accept 
and assimilate the crumbs of self-government 
that the empire is giving her. But if she wants 

242 



THE WORLD'S UNDER-DOGS 

freedom courageously enough to battle for it, 
then I am sufficient of an idealist to believe that 
in the end the wanting and the fighting and the 
dreaming will help the half hungry, half clothed 
native millions ; through learning to think of and 
fight for nationalism they will learn to think of 
and fight for their own social and economic 
rights. 

I can not too strongly emphasize this point — 
this one theory of revolution that I have indulged 
in. Only by a great, deep stirring of conscious- 
ness can the slave complex of the billion under- 
dogs of the world be broken and a real spirit of 
freedom and independence be substituted for it. 

It probably will seem a very cruel thing to say 
but if I were the great molder of the Universe I 
would not turn a hand or pull a cord to give the 
struggling, submerged peoples of the world their 
freedom. It is the dreaming and fighting and 
sacrificing that make them worthy and prepare 
them for it. 

If England would withdraw from India at this 
moment and give this great, seething half-conti- 
nent, with its scores of divergent castes and reli- 
gions and traditions, full independence there 
would be gray days ahead for India. But when 
the dream of freedom has penetrated into the 
inertia of three hundred million ignorant Indian 
peasants and workmen so deeply that they are 
willing to give their lives for it, then they are 

243 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

spiritually ready for it — and tliey will be ready 
to begin the long fight for social and industrial 
justice. 

These young-old nations of the world must 
again learn to walk alone. Some of them will try 
before they are quite ready and they will fall, but 
they must choose their own time; we can have 
very little to do with that. 

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind but 
that our own little India — and there are many 
who will object to this designation of the Philip- 
pines — ^would be infinitely better off for another 
full generation under the beneficent supervision 
of the United States. Americans in the islands 
who claim that there is less efficiency, less hon- 
esty, less advancement under the present scheme 
of native government than in the old days of un- 
divided American administration, are unquestion- 
ably right — ^but inefficiency and demagogery 
are ever the prices of democracy. 

There is no question but that a decade ago the 
Philippines were the best governed and most effi- 
ciently administrated lands in the world. The 
finest citizens of our republic poured out the best 
years of their lives in honest, intelligent and, 
idealistic service. No city or state or govern- 
mental department in our own country was admin- 
istered more efficiently or honestly than the 
most distant hill district of North Luzon. But 
it was a paternal and foreign government rest- 

244 



THE WOELD'S UNDER-DOGS 

ing on the rule of force — and this can never be 
either a sound or a rightful foundation. 

When Manuel Quezon, head of the Philippine 
independence movement, announces — in the same 
words that I have heard Indian revolutionists 
state their own case — that ''good government is 
no substitute for self-government" he is stating 
a fact that Americans, least of all, can dispute. 

These slogans, these signs of discontent and 
revolt, are real danger-signals. We of America 
are less guilty than the others, but our hands are 
not stainless. The whole West must drop its 
arrogance, its domineering, its superior bearing. 

We must cease to look upon the East as a great 
field for exploitation : we must think of the East 
in terms of striving peoples and not of future 
markets. The East is tired of our looting and our 
ruling. 

But there are other things we can and should 
do — the world's under-dogs do need a great deal 
that our white West can give them. They need 
our science and our medical skill ; they need our 
skill for organization and our technical ability; 
they need our own neglected theory of the broth- 
erhood of man, and much of our own gentler 
social system. But they don't want and won't 
have these things shoved down their throats with 
bayonets. 

Slowly and after a terrible cost we are begin- 
ning to realize that there are better and easier 

245 



THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

ways of gaining our ends. Doctor Cross, the 
brave sacrificing medical explorer who gave his 
life in Vera Cruz in an attempt to rid the ''hot 
country" of Mexico of its yellow-fever menace, 
knew one way to give the lower half of the world 
the best of our civilization without the use of 
threat or force. He was the new type of soldier 
who will one day "conquer" the world through 
kindness and gentleness and generosity. 

Teachers, doctors, mission workers, engineers, 
organizers — ^these must be the future colonizers, 
the bearers of new ideas. 

After all, the history of the spreading of the 
white man's civilization is not a pretty one. It 
has been mostly one of conquest and gain and 
loot, with a few fine mission workers and teach- 
ers and a handful of sincere civilians trying to 
undo all that men with bayonets and men dream- 
ing only of profits have done. 

And these men with bayonets and these men 
dreaming of profits have differed very little, 
regardless of the time or of the flag under which 
they conquered and looted. None has been a con- 
queror or an imperialist in his own eyes — ^but each 
in turn has pointed the finger of scorn at the 
other fellow and accused him of bad faith in deal- 
ing with weaker, far-away peoples. 

So it is that we Americans have had much to 
say of the British in Egypt and India and Ire- 
land, and the French in Indo-China and Madagas- 

246 



THE WORLD'S UNDER-DOGS 

car, and the Japanese in Korea and China and 
Siberia. Any of these accused might quite justly 
say, "Let him who is without sin cast the first 
stone" — and suggest that we study our own little 
conquest of Haiti and Santo Domingo and our 
interference in the affairs of Mexico and the tiny 
republics to the south. 

And it is high time that we all take stock, for 
there is a rising temper among these backward 
peoples all over the world — and particularly 
among the billion black, brown and yellow races 
of the East. For centuries the imagination of 
the Great East had been unstirred. There had 
been no ideals, no dreams. A billion people had 
been marking time while the stream of civiliza- 
tion had been flowing smftly in the New World. 

But now new ideals of nationalism have lit up 
the imagination and hearts of these peoples. 
They have been stirred from their great coma. 
They have opened their eyes and are stretching 
themselves and discovering the power of their 
numbers and of their years. 

They will gain their nationalism — ^nothing is 
more certain than that. But they will not stop 
there. If the fair rule of the British in India 
was to be permanently replaced by the rule of 
backward, Oriental maharajahs, steeped in their 
ancient despotic ways, I would find no thrill in 
the home-rule dreams of India. But they will not 
stop there. 

247 



THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 

I shall never forget what an Egyptian fellah 
in a mud village along the sleepy Nile said to me 
when I reminded him of the cruel conditions in 
Egypt before the British came. 

'*Yes," he answered with set jaw, ''but no one 
is going to oppress us in the future. We are sick 
and tired of being the under-dogs." 

And this to me is the great story of the Old 
East. These ancient millions will not stop with 
the victory of nationalism : they will go on and on, 
dreaming and demanding and finally gaining 
more victories for themselves — for the peons and 
the taos and the ryots and the fellaheen and the 
peasants and the coolies of the world. They will 
gain more rice and better homes and all the pre- 
cious things of real freedom. 

And those will be glorious days. 

IH£ END 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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